“It’s gonna feel like this world is opening up.”
Frontman of the American noise-rock band Daughters, Alexis S.F. Marshall, stands on stage with the rest of his entourage tapping the microphone during 5 minutes of radio silence with the audience on tenterhooks. Is this part of the opening routine? Are we part of some sort of metaphysical experience devoid of any music? Yet once the unorthodox technical faults are resolved, Daughters reveal why they clung onto so many End of Year Lists last year for their seminal 4th LP, You Won’t Get What You Want, after a decade away from the scene.
From Pitchfork’s description of the way Daughters’ LP ‘consumes and dominates’, to The Needle Drop’s affirmation that it was ‘the most terrifying album this decade’, the bar of expectations for this hotly-anticipated evening was set exponentially high for the well-renowned Rhode Island band. Whilst this particular London venue in Tufnell Park had a shaky record showcasing bands in their live format, the anxiety exuded by the crowd in the lead up to 9:15pm was beyond palpable. It had been over a decade since Daughters had last set foot in the U.K, formerly touring their scratchier math-rock sound of the past, yet this was all put aside once the band hurled into the first few tracks taken from last year’s abrasive LP.
‘They Reason They Hate Me’ instigated the grinding nature of Marshall’s hypnotically repetitive refrains amongst such palpitating noise-rock landscapes - mainly featuring synth screechings, bassy drums, and blaring distorted guitar riffs. “Don’t tell me how to do my job, you carry on like a son of a bitch” soon transcended into further unremitting cries of “I’ll cry about it, I’ll cry about it because I want to”, all the while encompassed by the record’s amalgamation of high-pitched background screechings with Marshall’s despairing vocal delivery. In spite of the sticky landing within the desired track of ‘Satan In The Wait’, the captivating world created by Daughters remained water-tight at the inception of this cataclysmic set - conducting an eruption of crowd chaos.
With their latest noise-rock sound reminiscent of such bands as Foetus and Suicide, their reversion into their past discography took to the more alacritous forms of Botch and Vein. Such popular tracks of ‘The Dead Singer’, ‘Recorded Inside a Pyramid’, and ‘Our Queens’, exuded a ubiquitous facade of sliding guitar riffs within short ruptures of energy. Recorded almost a decade ago, the disparity between these two timeframes proved notable - the former offering a punchier burst of math-rock, and the latter’s noise rock sheen incorporating elongated sounds from distorted synthesisers, drawn-out drum patterns, and repetitive vocal refrains.
Personally, the latter’s abrasively outstretched tones offered more to sink my teeth into - exemplified by the set’s mid-section track of ‘Less Sex’. Amidst the more intimate and groovier facade to Daughters’ destructive sound, Marshall’s lower vocal melodies gave a scintillating variation to the intrinsically brooding atmospheres constructed by the band’s concoction of noise-rock.
For the final section of this evening’s concoction, Daughters merely continued this helter-skelter Saturday night fever, embellishing each and every outro to such songs as ‘Guest House’, ‘Daughter’, and ‘Ocean Song’. For the middle track, the gradual piling of such ear-crushing instrumental lines on top of one another effectively sucked the audience into this reconstructed hell, repeatedly tormenting every sensory provided. Similar to that of Swans’ apocalyptical style of experimental rock, the bludgeoning conclusion to Daughters’ set entirely possessed Marshall on stage, engaged in such self-harming acts: incessantly spitting, scratching, swallowing his microphone, and tearing out his scarcely-remaining hair.
Returning back to the foray of noise-rock after an entire decade of radio silence is no easy feat. Yet Daughters emphatically announced their return not only through the release of their 4th LP, but also through the physical dimension of their vitriolic live performance. Whilst my preordained anxieties of the venue ultimately came true, from the lacklustre lighting to the various technical failures, Marshall marshalled his troops of this noise-rock war to victory over their beloved contingency of London fans. Contagiously engrossing himself in the violent facets of their apocalypticism, the frontman quite literally put his body on the line in the name of their music: the world of Daughters truly opened up before our very eyes, and my, was it an ineffaceable sight to behold.
7.5/10
Daughters' latest LP, You Won't Get What You Want, is out now and can be found here.
Photos are courtesy of Simon Balaam whose work can be found here.
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