🔗 Share this article

Within the song "Miss America", audiences are placed inside a hotel room close to JFK airfield, where the musician learns a heartbreaking news that her dad has illness diagnosis. The Sunderland-born artist had been touring America on her initial visit, playing with group Kero Kero Bonito, and abruptly grief takes over, tinging everything with melancholy. Unsteady keys and hushed strings accompany dark dispatches emanating from the tour van: "Rural scenes and crumbling homes / Shopping centers, illicit trades, anxious moments."

Her gentle vocals are delivered with a deadpan manner, yet the album's tension arises from the keen penmanship—blending fiction, traditional phrases, and direct diary entries—coupled with unexpected maximalism. Few tracks this year possess stronger storytelling style compared to "Shelly", a piece that depicts the death of a deer and descends into a petrol-laden reckoning, evoking written pieces illuminated by glimpses of distorted cello. Tense, subdued sections featuring echoing, strummed strings transition into grand choruses, with her voice digitally manipulated to become a presence omniscient and menacing.

Listeners might already be familiar with Walton from her work as a music creator, disc jockey, and member to bands such as Caroline. Daughters' musical twists draw on this diverse career. The first track "Sometimes" erupts in flourish, like an ensemble taken unawares, whereas "Born Again Backwards" radically increases the BPM with an intense, stunning, repeating drum fill. Dense walls of sound, skillfully mixed with a long-term partner, feel at once gnarly and ethereal, and Walton's dark, enchanted thoughts peak on standout "Lambs", a song that briefly becomes a twirling jig. "I hope your existence doesn't conclude with dying," Walton bargains, with poignant dark comedy.