REVIEW: Daughter – Stereo Mind Game

On the surface, 7 years without an album release doesn’t seem to have dulled the downbeat mood of Daughter’s main songwriter Elena Tonra. Two previous records (ignoring 2017’s video game soundtrack which the band don’t count as an album proper) focused largely on heartbreak, bitter feelings towards ex-lovers, or relationships on the brink of a brutal and broken collapse. As dark as that sounds, these were exquisitely beautiful LPs. And based on just a few listens, you would definitely feel that Stereo Mind Game is of the same ilk – it’s musical palette might be a little less grand, some of the songs slightly more straightforward than before, but throughout the tracks you can hear the same pained anxiety, the same feeling of a singer on the edge. Listening closely, though, there is something new here. Daughter (and particularly Tonra) have previously tended to focus on the traumatic past or the present that is about to come to a terrible end – much of the latest album focuses on a current relationship, a seemingly happy one, but one that is riddled with anxiety and sadness because of its long-distance nature. This time, the fear in the songs is that it will be a long time before they see the one they love – or receive a text back from them – rather than that they may never find happiness again.

The album’s best song is ‘Future Lover’, and it optimises this complicated mix of anxiety ridden hope that a relationship will last, as Tonra wistfully sings about the ‘insomniac trap’ caused by the way ‘split screens have always raised her suspicions’ and the time she spends ‘receiving sweet nothings from the ghost in the room.’ These clever lyrics show that her songwriting hasn’t lost its edge, and the idea of phone and video calls with your partner being compared to speaking to a ghostly absence will ring true for many who have just been through a global pandemic. The jittery beat under the song lends a tense feeling to the words, too. But on ‘Swim Back’ and ‘Be On Your Way’ we hear some genuinely uplifting beats and lyrics that offer cautious optimistic. The latter sees Tonra tell her lover she ‘has a feeling we’ll repeat this evening’. And on ‘Swim Back’ she is willing to find ‘a hole in the ocean’ to ‘erase distance’ and find a way back into her partner’s arms; for this particular songwriter, these revelations are positively joyful.

It is interesting, then, that on an album that does focus on a more hopeful form of love, that Daughter have decided to make their instrumentation less lush and full than on any previous work. This is not necessarily a negative, but it is noticeable that the arrangements are less layered, the production slightly less crisp, the sonic atmosphere slightly duller. Again, I don’t mean that as an insult – it is purposeful, and it works for this set of songs, but it is an interesting comparison and progression that makes you question if the mood of this disconnected love was responsible for a less full feeling than the mood that came with heartbreak and existential dread.

The title of ‘Party’, for example, might indicate a rush of joy and abandon. Instead, it has one of the most pared back beats in Daughter’s history – it builds, yes, but not in the same way that some of their previous epics did. That said, it’s extremely engaging and it centres Tonra’s words and vocals. And ‘Dandelion’, the album’s other highlight and perhaps the one that most obviously engages with the distance in this relationship, again keeps things simple with it’s gorgeous guitar and percussion. The sense is that, as we hear a story about waiting for a reply to a text message, the tightly wound tune is adding to the tension that such as situation creates for us.

When a band returns after such a long time, you often find one of three things has happened: they’ve run out of ideas and sound like a pale imitation of their early selves, they’ve taken the time to grow and evolve and sound like a different band entirely, or they have effortlessly continued their previous journey and make it feel like they’ve never been away. Daughter fit into the third category. This doesn’t have the immense soundscapes of LP1 or the bluster of LP2, but it finds a measured medium somewhere in between. A maturity has crept into the songs, meaning the band are not looking back but focusing on the here and now – but they have become so distant from their earlier selves that we can’t recognise the same anxieties and concerns, the same hopes and dreams. So it is no huge step forward or back for Daughter, but a steady continuation of an exciting career.

Words by Fran Slater