“In five years I hope the songs feel like covers / Dedicated to new lovers,” Lucy Dacus belts at the end of “Night Shift,” a December 2017 single from her sophomore album Historian, released the following March via Matador. Five years later, “Night Shift” has indeed reached the status of a classic. It remains her most popular song to date and has undoubtedly soundtracked a disproportionate number of emotional breakups.
Today (March 8), in advance of Matador’s May 26 fifth-anniversary reissue Historian on red vinyl, Dacus has shared the track’s first visual treatment, a bona fide short film to complement its six-and-a-half-minute run time. Directed by Jane Schoenbrun — the auteur behind the Alex G-soundtracked We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and a forthcoming film titled I Saw The TV Glow that will feature appearances from Dacus’ boygenius bandmate Phoebe Bridgers, as well as Snail Mail’s Lindsay Jordan and Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst — the video stars Dacus as a receptionist at a resort that feels trapped in a magical realism version of the ’70s.
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Shot over the course of several days at the real-life Poconos Palace in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, it’s a non-linear narrative about what appears to be a Wizard of Oz convention, featuring a costumed ensemble cast mainly comprising Dacus’ friend group (which, apparently, includes Yellowjackets actress Jasmin Savoy Brown).
Watch the clip above.
