Georgia-based Paste Magazine has named the second album by Richmond-based singer and songwriter Lucy Dacus as its number one record of the year. Congrats to Lucy!

Here’s what they wrote about the album “Historian” by the Matador recording artist, Style Weekly Top 40 under 40 winner, and proud graduate of Maggie L. Walker’s Governor School:

“Historian is at once tightly focused and musically expansive, 10 new songs that sidestep any notion of a sophomore slump. While her 2016 debut, No Burden, had its tentative moments, Dacus displays remarkable poise here. She never sounds less than supremely confident on lyrics that make the personal political, and vice versa, accompanied by musical arrangements that are sometimes downright majestic. It wasn’t a secret that Dacus is a strong lyricist, but she’s become subtler, too, with turns of phrase that gleam, and sometimes devastate: “I’m just calling ’cause I’m used to it / And you’ll pick up ’cause you’re not a quitter,” she sings on “Addictions.” She’s just as skilled at describing a scene as delivering one-liners: Dacus wrote “Yours and Mine” after participating in the 2017 Women’s March, and she evokes the feeling of camaraderie and, simultaneously, the excitement and trepidation of standing on a precipice: “For those of you who told me I should stay indoors / Take care of you and yours,” she warns over a big, thumping beat and jangling guitar. “But me and mine…we’ve got a long way to go until we get home.” It’s a rare artist who has a voice so compelling, and rarer still are the ones who learn so early on how to use it. At 23, Dacus has already made a career album with Historian, and she’s really only just getting started.” —Eric R. Danton

Dacus is currently on tour in California. She has only two 2019 dates scheduled, both of them festival stops in Georgia.