Daughters - 'You Won't Get What You Want'

Daughters have always been a fascinating collective within their realm of music. Although, it was really hard to determine what realm that they fitted in for the longest time. Their 2003 debut [not so] full length Canada Songs blisters through its 10 tracks in just an 11 minute runtime, with vocalist Alexis Marshall’s slightly amateurish screams clashing against the lacerating guitars feeling more like a Converge record on crack than anything sincerely cohesive. They never felt like a grindcore band, though. Even early on, their penchant for writing shocking, harsh-noise influenced tracks was also evident. This evidence became cemented when the Providence, RI collective released 2006’s Hell Songs. While still feeling frighteningly frantic throughout its upgraded 23 minute runtime, the shrill yelps from Alexis shifted towards a musky, mumbly drawl that felt more like Elvis being recorded on quaaludes than it did a freakish Dillinger Escape Plan rip. Along with the calculated instrumentation, Hell Songs only genuinely made sense as a soundtrack to insanity, and that, it fit into perfectly.

That was, until the band decided to shed their grindcore overtones for a more accessible, yet still quintessentially maniacal noiserock sound. Their 2010 self titled, Daughters, released after the band’s supposed breakup, served as a lush, enthralling, and ugly swansong. It seemed that the road for Daughters, after that, was nothing but utter darkness. Then after over eight years filled with a nearly haunting quietness from the band, a new single in the form of “Satan In The Wait” had dropped through Ipecac Records. Fans were immediately enamored with the return, already clinging to the song’s refrain of “this world is opening up!” like radio listeners would with a new Drake hook. Yet, it seemed there was an unspoken tension among Daughters fans (including myself) which was, well, could this album really live up to the massive hype that’s unintentionally been amassed of it?

Well, there’s a moment near the end of You Won’t Get What You Want’s restless dysphoria and panic that culminates in what truly defines Daughters as not just a project (nor a band) but a monument of what is the ugly, undefined, and unrelenting “cutting edge.” The repeated shouts of “LET ME IN” that refrain throughout the closing-opus “Guest House” affirm the piercing horror that lies in Daughters’ sound like a siren, calling out the end of the world. If it isn’t apparent, Daughters, and the content on You Won’t Get What You Want, are the carbon-cut definition of what is not for the faint of heart. I typically despise that phrase, but as someone who’s personally dove into the many abrasive rabbit holes that music has to offer (whether it be harsh noise, grind, powerviolence, other edgy shit), I still found this album almost impossible to get through upon first listen. Whether it be the blistering funhouse-esque keys that grip you by the ears on “The Flammable Man,” or the smooth clean vocals and muddled out electronics on “Less Sex” that haunt the listener, the album is able to keep a consistent anxiety that is respectably unmatched by any other piece of art. While it isn’t pleasant or beautiful in our conventional perceptions, that is realistically the least of your worries, as You Won’t Get What You Want plays with much more than your perceptions.

The third single released from the album, titled “Long Road, No Turns,” is perhaps the most indicative of this. The lyric video they produced for it sees the tortured restraint from frontman Alexis Marshall on full blast, as the drowning guitars and the broken-beat drums back the sonic-circus in front. Lyrics like “Everybody climbs up high then falls real far / And I don’t know what to say when people come undone / The road is long, the road is dark / And these are just the words to somebody else’s song” or the song’s poignant refrain of “It may please your heart to see some shackled, wrists and throat / Naked as the day they were born,” that really describes how many people are so easily drawn to watching those under them spiral even lower. It had me thinking of the perception of a “trainwreck” and what that means in terms of a human being, and how an individual gets to that point where they’re no longer considered individual. Along with songs like the spiraling epic “Ocean Song” or the slightly more accessible rock single (for Daughters) in “The Reason They Hate Me,” a ghastly image starts to get painted, as the album’s repeated listens start to wear on you, and the apocalyptic overtones of the record metamorphosize into something else. Sardonic lyrics and Alexis’ now-iconic drawl paint a set of bleakly colored strokes onto Daughters’ canvas, while the no-wave influenced production drowns it all in a black mold-ridden filth, like a grown man standing alone in the shower with a 40oz, waiting for the end. And while its grotesquely wondersome painting remains ambiguous in its message, You Won’t Get What You Want begs you to come in and leave with your own individual interpretation.