the lion’s daughter

Progressive Midwesterners strip things down on Skin Show

Experimentation has always been the watchword for St. Louis sludge chameleons the Lion’s Daughter. Consisting of drummer Erik Ramsier, guitarist/bassist Scott Fogelbach and guitarist/vocalist Rick Giordano, the power trio began their career over a decade ago dabbling in knotted, blackened sludge before releasing 2013’s A Black Sea, a lush, cinematic album-length collaboration with Americana quintet Indian Blanket. ¶ “I’d hate for our band to become predictable at any point,” writes Giordano. “As childish as it may be, I’m more interested in provoking the listener or leaving them scratching their head. I’m not afraid to lose fans from record to record.” ¶ Giordano and company’s path took another left turn in 2018 when the former added electronics to his repertoire for their synthwave and industrial-tinged album Future Cult. That detour seems to have become the band’s main route—their newest iteration, Skin Show, expands on the synthesizers of its predecessor. “[On Future Cult] I felt we had finally found our identity, and through the utilization of synth textures, we achieved the sound that

I’d always heard in my head,” Giordano says. “I would be surprised if they didn’t remain a part of our band from here on out.”

But Skin Show is no retread of a recent victory, either. Giordano describes the album as more of a sequel than a second season—one that pares their previously labyrinthine song structures into tight, hooky horror stories, accentuated by a clear, deep production job courtesy of Sanford Parker, who gave Skin Show the same focus he did Nachtmystium.

“I said jokingly that I wanted it to sound like an arena rock record,” Giordano says, “but there is also some truth to that. These songs are intentionally bigger and have more meat on their bones. We’ve made songs in the past that were a chaotic and complicated mess, and it was fun, but there are bands that do it much better, and we’ve already made those. Our intent with Skin Show was to make something larger and more direct. Hooks and memorable melodies are not always bad things. Sometimes it’s OK for a song to just be a goddamn song.”

Then again, maybe Skin Show is more of a prequel than a sequel. Lyrically and in terms of synthesizer choices, the album turns the clock back from the ’80s and looks to the sleazy pornographic heyday of ’70s Times Square for influence— a setting Giordano chose specifically for the challenge it presented.

“As a man, it’s easy to write about death and destruction,” he explains, “but it’s difficult and even a bit risky to write about the darker sides of something like sexuality. Especially in an era where exploitation and abuse are rampant like they are. But I can say with 100 percent confidence that if you think these lyrics are fucked up, it’s because you are fucked up. I sleep just fine at night, and I’m the weirdo who wrote this shit.”