I listen to angrier music in the wintertime, especially when I’m biking. Cars thinking “no one could be crazy enough to bike in this weather” forget to use simple things like turn signals to make everyone’s lives easier, and so biking becomes more stressful than it should be, not to mention how sneaky ice can be. There’s a reason good pop songs are often described as “breezy” -- it’s because they’re refreshing on a hot day. I don’t want to hear The Sea and Cake when it’s 15 degrees out.
So today, riding to work, I put on Daughters’ self-titled record. One would’ve thought that expanded track times and song structures would mean that they’d boiled their sound down from the extreme grind of “Hell Songs” and “Canada Songs,” but somehow they managed to become better songwriters and sound even more chaotic and unhinged. These songs are not machine-gun blasts; they are predators who have scored a kill wound but enjoy circling the prey and watching it bleed. The vocal delivery is a preacherman Danzig, drunk on the blood of an alcoholic, ranting at you while chaos churns below. And yet it’s engrossing and inspiring and awesome, and it calls you to go forth and create and give the finger to the dreariness of winter gloom.
The second track is called “The First Supper.” Shrieking guitars with infectious echoes manage simultaneous walls of noise and hookiness, while the singer gargles and belches croons about what happens “when a man sees another man as nothing more than meat.” It’s vicious and has a great false ending right around 2:45. It’s not surprising that this incarnation of Daughters fell apart right after making this record. I’d love to see them play a reunion show, but I can understand not wanting to tour behind these songs. They vibrate at an almost uncomfortably primal level, and “The First Supper” is the best song this week.
