Lucius are back with their first album since 2016's Good Grief. Second Nature is due out April 8 via Mom + Pop/Dine Alone/Second Nature Records/Secretly Distribution. It was produced by Dave Cobb and Brandi Carlile, and recorded mainly at Nashville's RCA Studio A. Carlile and Sheryl Crow contributed backing vocals to one track, "Dance Around It," and you can see the cover art and tracklist below.
"Lucius has been one of my favorite bands since their first studio album," Carlile says. "I kept running into them at festivals and finding myself mystified by their power. This album feels like home to me and anyone growing up surrounded by 80s and 90s pop, but somehow Second Nature is the beginning of a new era—not just for Lucius, but for all of us. We need to get back up on our feet and that’s what this album is insisting we do. This is my first co-production with my dear pal Dave Cobb and I don’t know if I’ve ever been prouder even to witness something let alone get my hands on it. It was an absolute blast."
Vocalist and songwriter Jess Wolfe calls the album "a record that begs you not to sit in the difficult moments, but to dance through them. It touches upon all these stages of grief—and some of that is breakthrough, by the way. Being able to have the full spectrum of the experience that we have had, or that I’ve had in my divorce, or that we had in lockdown, having our careers come to a halt, so to speak. I think you can really hear and feel the spectrum of emotion and hopefully find the joy in the darkness. It does exist. That’s why we made Second Nature and why we wanted it to sound the way it did: our focus was on dancing our way through the darkness."
The first single is the disco-tinged "Next to Normal," and you can watch the kaleidoscopic video below.
Lucius are going on a spring headlining tour in North America beginning in April, followed by more US dates supporting Brandi Carlile, and European dates in September. Celisse opens most of the spring shows, and you can see all dates below.
The tour includes an NYC show at Beacon Theatre on May 4, and a Montclair, NJ show at The Wellmont Theater on May 6. Tickets to all dates go on sale Friday, January 14 at 10 AM local time, with a fan pre-sale beginning Wednesday, January 12.