Daughter - If You Leave: album review

Daughter, If You Leave

Released 18^th March 2013

‘If you’re in love then you’re the lucky one/ Because most of us are bitter over someone.’ This optimistic outlook typifies Daughter’s debut album release If You Leave, a haunting electronic-folk concoction that sits somewhere between The XX and Laura Marling. Singer Elena Tonra has clearly suffered acute heartbreak and some of these songs are genuinely evocative, musically compelling explorations of those universal but excruciatingly personal experiences. But much of the album blurs into wistful oohs and bleakly minimal guitar refrains to leave you feeling drained and rather uninspired.

The subtle changes Daughter have made from their stunning debut EP His Young Heart – a more acoustic, intensely moving, deceptively simple exploration of love and pain – have made their sound feel a little generic and so less potent. The band have been praised for their originality and there are still signs of that in If You Leave. But the moments of fresh creativity seem to shine out from among forgettable fillers and misguided attempts at more upbeat songs (which are essentially the same as the more melancholy tracks but with an incongruously faster tempo).

Tonra’s gossamer-fine voice does send shivers down the spine, and there are moments when the shockingly bold honesty of her lyrics brings home the brutal emotions of a cataclysmic breakup. The best track on the album, ‘Youth’, is a desperately dystopian vision of youth and disillusionment. It begins with beautifully tender vocals over iterative, intricate fingerpicked guitar riffs, builds through a drum-punctuated bridge and reaches an intense climax of resonant post-production echoes and blossoming cymbals. And the three members of Daughter (singer Tonra, guitarist Igor Haefeli and drummer Remi Aguilella) magnify their sounds and manipulate their instruments in such a way as to conjure the impression a full band working seamlessly together to create striking soundscapes. From sparse beginnings out in the wild, their melodies and rhythm grow to embody passionate railings against this foul world that reach King Lear proportions.

But instead of Lear’s elegiac raving in the untamed outdoors, you feel as if Tonra is producing the same overwhelming emotion but in a stifling living room where its energy is dissipated and somehow inappropriate. As she says on ‘Smother’, ‘I’m a suffocator’. By the end of this album, you don’t feel you have come through a musical catharsis and enlightenment but that you have been numbed by the repetition and desolation of these songs. Daughter undeniably have an interesting sound and an elemental rawness that could become something great. But listening to the entirety of If You Leave is a dampening rather than revitalising experience. I look forward to watching Daughter play a gig to see if there is a visceral passion in their live performance that brings out the power in these songs, a power you can feel vibrating just below the surface but unable to break out.

Follow me on twitter @BetweentheReeds