Welcome back to the Indieheads Album of the Year 2018 series. With Christmas around the corner, it's a joy to present my favorite easy-listening album of the year.
Enjoy the sweet melodies of Daughters' You Won't Get What You Want and read this excellent writeup by /u/jacksoncodfish.
Artist- Daughters
Album- You Won't Get What You Want
Listen
Background by /u/jacksoncodfish
Forming in the early 2000’s after the breakup of grindcore band As The Sun Sets, vocalist Alexis Marshall, guitarist Jeremy Wabiszczewicz and drummer Jon Syverson added new members Nicholas Andrew Sadler and Pat Masterson and set out to form a new “artcore” rock band that pushed the limits of noise rock and hardcore punk. This Rhode Island band chose the name Daughters, and over the span of that decade became one of the most critically beloved acts of the hardcore punk scene. Known for their bruising mathcore songs and batshit insane live performances that involved nudity and often bodily fluids, the band released two shorts albums titled Canada Songs (2003) and Hell Songs (2006) which make up for their short runtimes with their blistering and brutal hardcore punk energy. Their first run as a band culminated with their incredible self-titled album Daughters in 2010, an album that elevated their sound to ambitious new territory and received great acclaim from fans and critics alike. Unfortunately, this breakthrough came at an inopportune time, as it was released during a period of tension between band members that escalated and eventually lead to the band breaking up. The songs from Daughters were only performed once at a secret show in their hometown of Providence before the band split up for what seemed like a permanent hiatus, and many fans assumed Daughters would be the final act of the band’s wild run.
Eight years later, thanks largely to the efforts of Robotic Empire co-founder Andy Low who repaired relations between Alexis Marshal and Nicholas Sadler, the band is back with a towering 4th record titled You Won’t Get What You Want, an album almost twice as long as Daughters and longer than Hell Songs and Canada Songs put together. The band knew they only wanted to return if their return was something new and exciting to them, not content simply rehashing the material of their past outputs. This lead them to scrap a planned 2015 EP that felt “forced”, taking the time to hone their new approach to strange, dark noise rock fully before releasing new material. Their patience and perfectionism proved to be a wise decision — as You Won’t Get What You Want is not only the band’s crowning achievement, but in my opinion is one of the best rock albums released this decade.
Review by /u/Jacksoncodfish
This city is an empty glass
Words do nothing
No one sleeps
This city is an empty glass
I’ve heard albums of loud, furious rock music before. I’ve heard albums that have dark, introspective lyrics. I’ve heard albums that make me angry, albums that make me sad, albums that make me feel hopeless. But in my entire life I have never heard an album that physically affects me as much as You Won’t Get What you Want by Daughters. This album changes my core body temperature, it alters my essence entirely. You Wont Get What You Want is certainly “visceral”, but I’ve heard albums described as “visceral” before, and the kind of thrills those albums specialized in pale in comparison to the cacophony of music that this album contains. Hitting play on the album’s slow-building first track, “City Song”, is like slowly dousing my neural pathways in gasoline and then dropping a lit cigarette. This is music that is wild and unhinged, with performances that sound as if the band members are being chased by a pack of wolves in the recording booth. After a dark and unbelievably tense opening sequence, the band revs up their engines and explodes forward with a wall of sour noise, immediately letting you know what kind of experience you are in for. You Won’t Get What You Want is “not music interesting in growing on you: it consumes and dominates”
This city is an empty glass
Graciousness is lost
The betrayed yearn
This city is an empty glass
The music of this album draws from the sound of early Swans records and other noise rock and art punk bands like This Heat, but the chaotic and abrasive style of Daughters is one all their own. Combining stylistic elements of no-wave, post-punk, mathcore, grindcore, and industrial rock, this album is a party where any rock genres are invited so long as they are dark and loud as shit. On tracks like “The Flammable Man”, pulverizing walls of sour guitar tones fill the mix as mathcore drum beats mash against the speakers in a horrific cacophony that for some reason I have decided I enjoy listening to. In fact,“The Flammable Man” is a song that is so noisy and abrasive that it took until my 5th listen to realize the song prominently featured samples of actual gunshots. Other tracks like Satan in The Wait show the band experimenting with slower tempos, taking the signature churning groove of Daughters and stretching it out to a 7 minute song. Other tracks like no-wave rager “The Lord’s Song” move so quickly that it seems to only hold together in one piece due to its hurtling forward momentum, like a car slowly falling apart as it barrels down a hill. The influences and instrumental pallete of this album is varied but uniformly abrasive, uniting many of rock’s most extreme sounds under one roof.
This city is an empty glass
Shops are closed
There is nothing
This city is an empty glass
The title of this album is more than just a fitting warning for the kind of abrasive rock music contained inside: it is also a reflection of the deeply nihilistic worldview this music inhabits. What makes this album truly terrifying is not only the post apocalyptic and nihilistic tone of the music and lyrics, but rather how much I found myself able to connect with these songs, and how vividly they reflected the experiences of being alive in 2018. But the terrors of You Won’t Get What You Want are not boogeymen or monsters or even fascist politicians — rather this album confronts the deep, existential fears that live within all of us and creep around the darkest corners of our brains. What if I don’t make it? What if I can’t keep myself from unraveling? What if I crack under the pressure of trying to survive in the oppressive banality of life under capitalist systems? What if none of this matters? What if we’re too late to fix our dying planet? On You Wont Get What You Want, these kind of quiet, inescapable doubts that have kept me awake at late hours of the night are amplified to the loudest possible volume, demanding to be reckoned with.
This city is an empty glass
The buildings shriek
As everything weeps
This city is an empty glass
Not only is this album one of the most hard-hitting and abrasive rock albums of the decade, the fiery musical performances are paired with one of the most incredible and terrifying performances by a rock frontman I have ever heard. Lead vocalist Alexis Marshall was formerly known for mostly screaming vocals on the early Daughters albums, but on this record he performs in a mix of spoken word and unhinged shouting and singing that is somehow infinitely more terrifying than screaming at the top of his lungs. As he wails “Everybody climbs up high then falls real far / A little is all it takes / A little is all it takes” on the album’s second track “Long Road, No Turns”, you get the impression that the frenzied, manic state that he is performing in is not a performed affectation but rather a startlingly real expression of panic. The vocals throughout the record are often completely dry with no reverb or effects, leaving the raw emotion of his vocals bare and unvarnished as he wails over the pummeling rock instrumentals. This is not an album interested in dialogues or confessionals about struggling with mental health, rather it is a portrait of the terrifying extremes of the human condition, embodying a mental breakdown as a terrifying form of performance art.
The trees hang their heads
And the wired wants faith, fray
The songs sing silently
Oh
This city is an empty glass
This city is an empty glass
The unhinged quality to the performance is backed up by truly inspired lyrical explorations of misery and trauma that are some of the most heart-wrenchingly beautiful poetry I have ever heard. In concept, a spoken word adjacent delivery and darkly poetic lyrical style sounds like it could easily be unbearably pretentious or overly melodramatic, but the poetry of You Won’t Get What You Want is undeniable, deeply affecting art. The repeated mantras and inscrutable musings of Alexis Marshall are like a twisted dark cousin of David Byrne’s lyrical style on albums like Remain In Light — using art-house artifice in a way that is actually deeply sincere rather than pretentious and detached. The specific interpretations of the lyrics are secondary to the terrifyingly resonant truths they clearly draw from, the emotion of each line unmistakable even when meaning may be inscrutable.
When the band chooses to depict a concrete lyrical narrative in favor of their more abstract musings, as they do on the track “Ocean Song”, the results are equally bone-chilling. “Ocean Song” tells the story of Paul, an everyman with a job and a family who comes home from a long day of work only to have the garage door not work, a minor inconvenience that when stacked upon “years of servitude at last present” sends him spiraling into him into a deep existential crisis. Paul, unable to shake the beginning of his mental unraveling, listens to the primal voice in his head urging him to run and takes off, “sprinting like some wild animal”. This narrative is one heightened for dramatic effect, but the kind of existential terror depicted here should be familiar to anyone who has dealt with depression — as often the mundane routines and annoyances of life can feel like impossibly heavy burdens when faced with the reality that these mundane routines are all there is. The feeling of not being able to see beyond the burdens of day to day existence are so perfectly captured by the album’s gut wrenching conclusion, as Paul runs, searching “to know, to see for himself / if there is an ocean beyond the waves”. The music and lyrics of You Won’t Get What You Want are pushed to frightening extremes, but the observations they make about the human condition are terrifyingly real and relatable.
This city is an empty glass
And the air shrieks
The breath is long
And the fires are out
The waters sit still
The appeal of You Won’t Get What You Want is certainly rooted in its loud, cathartic energy, but the few moments of contrast on the album where the band suddenly pulls back add a much needed nuance to this album. The only song on this album that could possibly be described as “inviting” is the song “Less Sex”, a seductive, Nine Inch Nails inspired crooner that acts as a much needed breather in between the countless barn burners across the rest of the tracklist. The song features Alexis’s most melodic and sultry vocal by far and an intoxicating bassline, but as the track progresses it incorporates a piercing wall of ambient noise, as if no Daughters song is complete with at least one harshly abrasive element. But the beauty of this album’s abrasive musical assault is that whenever the band decides to finally give you what you want, those moments of beauty are exponentially more effective.
Nowhere is this effect of contrasting extremes utilized more powerfully than on the album’s monumental closing track “Guest House”, which is not only the perfect way to close this album but is one of the single best post-hardcore songs this decade. This track trades in some of the wordier and more poetic lyricism of the album’s other tracks for simple, desperate cries for help, as Alexis frantically screams the repeated questions of “Who locked the door? Who bent the key?” while begging to be let into a door that will not open. “Guest house” kicks off at about a 9/10 on the intensity scale at its start and slowly works its way up to about a 15/10 by its midpoint, as the band pushes their sound to a what feels like a true breaking point. As the song begins to near the close, a funeral dirge of gothic horns begin to fill the mix and slowly pull the song back down to earth, like a thick fog that seems to envelop the angular guitars and pounding drums. As they do so, Alexis’ pleas become increasingly tired and weary, and as the song comes to a final halt you feel him give up his desperate pleas for salvation. Eventually Alexis’s vocals and the pounding guitars, bass, and drums finally leave the track, and what started as a firestorm of punk energy melts away leaving only the horn section. These horns are then enveloped in gorgeous swirls of beautiful ambient synthesizers and strings, a moment so stunning it seems impossible it could have been made by the same band that only moments ago was performing at their most chaotic. After 47 minutes of uncompromising fury and hardly any melody, this single minute of serenity feels like an oasis in the middle of an arid desert, and hits with incredibly potent emotion when the album is listened to in full. But even contained in the album’s most beautiful and melodic moment is one of its darkest and most nihilistic ideas — as the peace and relief symbolized by this moment in the album is only achieved as the narrator’s terror and panic subsides and he grows too tired to fight a losing battle and gives up. It’s unclear whether this final musical transition is meant to literally symbolize the death or suicide of the narrator, but the funeral-like quality to the horns and the mix of beauty and deep sadness evoked by the ambient melodies is truly crushing either way. By the time I reach the end of the album, I am often in tears, drained completely by the cathartic and violent journey of the album. It is art that demands an intense commitment from the listener, and rewards those who choose to surrender to this oppressive, visceral experience.
This year, while I have made many personal strides in dealing with my day to day struggles with anxiety and depression, I have found it harder than ever to bear existence in a world that routinely feels cruel beyond measure. For longs stretches of this year I have found myself in throws of deep existential despair and nihilism faced with the prospects of a rapidly deteriorating planet and a failing capitalist system. It feels difficult to imagine a world where this gets better, to imagine a future where we right the ship and reverse the irreparable damage the older generations have done to this country and the world in the past 50 years. Immigrants trapped in cages, trans people denied a right to live and exist freely, poor people denied the right to live at all: the more I become aware of the state of the world and the ideology that governs it the more I feel it is a cruel and unfair one, and the more I fear the instigators of such cruelty will never see the justice they deserve. The weight of this reality is one I carry with me every day. I carry it on my shoulders, I feel its presence in the shadows, I walk beside it — unable to make it go away. It is one thing for a glass to appear half empty rather than half full, but the pessimism implied by refrain “this city is an empty glass” on “City Song” is a new level of despair all together.
As I struggle to navigate these seemingly apocalyptic times, no other work of art has come close to mirroring those feelings the way that You Won’t Get What You Want does. You would think someone so preoccupied with existential dread would avoid art that so directly acknowledges and reflects my deepest fears, but I find an enormous amount of solidarity and strange comfort in this album. While much of this album sees Alexis tortured by internal turmoil, the album’s few moments where that turmoil and anger is directed outward are pure catharsis, like on the chorus of “The Reason They Hate Me” where Alexis screams “DON’T TELL ME HOW TO DO MY JOB” with gleeful disgust for the “gimmie-gimmie son of a bitch” he is addressing. The blistering, mind-numbing throttle of this album’s 10 tracks essentially act as an exorcism of my worst anxieties about the state of the world, as the wailing guitars and shouted refrains violently bash those fears out of my body.
Almost every young generation believes themselves to be the ones who will inherit a great apocalypse — part of growing up seems to involve going through the process of realizing the sky isn’t actually going to fall down. As much as our current crisis feel uniquely horrible, I try my hardest to remember that the course of human history is long, and there are countless others who felt absolutely certain they were born at the dawn of the end times only to find that not to be the case. There is deep fear, anguish, and desperation in the music of this album, and although I wish it did not reflect my own reality as much as it does, its ability to do so is a reminder than I am not the only one struggling on this road. This album is one of the true crowning achievements this year: an absolute barn burner that simultaneously succeeds in being conceptual, poetic, political, and thrilling. But most of all, You Won’t Get What You Want has succeeded in making me feel a little less alone in an increasingly isolating and cruel world. And for that it should be celebrated.
The road is long, the road is dark
And these are just the words to somebody else’s song
Favorite Lyrics
That bastard had a head like a matchstick
Face like he was sucking concrete through a straw
Some faces not even a mother can love.
Says the spit and spatter of broken glass from above
- “Satan In The Wait”
I don't lie awake at night
For a good time, because it's fun
I don't live near the ocean anymore
For fear the tide will turn
I don't bet on the horses anymore
Keeping away from the one I rode in on”
- “The Flammable Man”
We're open mouthed in the deepest shit of all
The spitting image of an unanswered call
Lost love in a gaping maw
The same dead hand knocking at the door
The same dead hand knocking at the door
There's a war
- “Daughter”
His shoes come up from off his feet
The shadow haunts him for several yards
The ghosts of what he was, desperate to keep up until gone
Now the road, punching upwards into his soft, naked feet
He is never-knowing, never again
Forever flowing, no more waiting
His muscles burn, deciding to run till he can run no more
To find everything he can find
To know, to see for himself
If there is an ocean beyond the waves” -
- “Ocean Song”
Talking Points
-
Who locked the door?
-
Who bent the key?
-
I've been knocking and knocking and knocking and knocking
-
Pounding and knocking and knocking
-
LET ME INNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
Well folks, there you have it, the smooth jazz album 2018 demanded. Thanks again to /u/jacksoncodfish for the writeup and check back in for /u/NMHipsterTrash and their take on Graduating Life's inventively named album, Grad Life
Submitted December 23, 2018 at 07:29PM by DesmondLongo http://bit.ly/2EL7OT6
No comments:
Post a Comment