The First Record "Daughters" Explores Grief and Style
In this song "Miss America", audiences find themselves inside a lodging close to JFK airfield, where Jennifer Walton learns the devastating news that her dad has cancer diagnosis. The Sunderland-born performer was touring the US on her initial visit, playing with group Kero Kero Bonito, when abruptly grief casts a shadow, coloring all in grey. Faltering piano and hushed orchestration accompany dark reports from the tour van: "Rural scenes and crumbling homes / Shopping centers, illicit trades, anxious moments."
Her gentle vocals are delivered with a flat manner, yet the record's tension stems from her keen writing—blending fiction, traditional phrases, and direct diary entries—along with surprising maximalism. Few songs this year possess more potent novelistic style compared to "Shelly", which describes the death of a deer and spirals toward a fuel-soaked reckoning, reminiscent of written works illuminated with glimpses of distorted strings. Anxious, subdued verses featuring resonating, plucked strings transition into expansive choruses, with Walton's vocals electronically altered into something omniscient and sinister.
Listeners may already know Walton as a music creator, disc jockey, and contributor to bands such as Caroline. Daughters' musical twists draw on this varied background. The opener "Sometimes" erupts with fanfare, as if an ensemble taken by surprise, while "Born Again Backwards" drastically ups the BPM with an intense, stunning, looping drum fill. Thick walls of sound, skillfully mixed with a longtime collaborator, seem at once rough and spiritual, while her dark, magical thinking peak on highlight "Lambs", which momentarily becomes a twirling jig. "May your life never end in death," Walton pleads, exuding heart-aching dark comedy.