The Debut Album "Daughters" Explores Sorrow and Style

Within this track "Miss America", listeners find themselves in a lodging near JFK airfield, as the musician receives the devastating news that her dad has cancer diagnosis. This Sunderland-born artist was traveling the US for the first time, playing alongside group Kero Kero Bonito, when abruptly sadness takes over, tinging everything with melancholy. Unsteady keys and hushed strings accompany gothic dispatches from the road: "Cattle farm and broke down shack / Strip-mall, drug deal, panic attacks."

Her soft singing are delivered with a flat style, while this record's tension arises from her sharp writing—blending fiction, traditional phrases, and direct personal notes—coupled with unexpected maximalism. Not many songs recently possess stronger novelistic style than "Shelly", a piece that describes the death of an animal and spirals toward a fuel-soaked confrontation, reminiscent of literary works illuminated by flickers of warped strings. Anxious, subdued verses featuring resonating, strummed guitar transition to expansive choruses, with Walton's vocals electronically altered to become something all-knowing and menacing.

Audiences may previously be familiar with the artist as a music creator, DJ, and contributor in groups such as Caroline. Daughters' musical twists draw on this diverse career. The opener "Sometimes" bursts in flourish, as if a string band taken unawares, while "Born Again Backwards" radically ups the BPM via an intense, stunning, repeating drum fill. Dense walls of sound, skillfully mixed with a long-term partner, seem at once gnarly and ethereal, and Walton's morbid, enchanted thinking peak in standout "Lambs", a song that momentarily becomes a swirling jig. "May your life never end in death," Walton pleads, with heart-aching dark comedy.