Music for me has always been about hearing the emotion in a track. This is why I think that the majority of my music taste has been labelled as depressing. While we were still getting to know each other, my girlfriend asked me for a list of my top ten songs - which you can see on my profile. It wasn’t long before she was asking ’Are there any happy songs on here?’ and excelling ’Oh my God this is so depressing!’. Well, I hate to say it, but she’s right. Yes I enjoy a good crowd pleaser of a song, but to make it into the dizzying heights of my top ten, there’s need to be some raw emotion in there, and that’s usually misunderstood as depression.
Well recently, a band that was up there in my list of favourite depressing artists, suffered a fall from grace, as in my humble opinion, they took it a step too far.
Not To Disappear
Daughter’s second studio album arrived on a wave of anticipation, especially from myself. Ever since I heard The Wild Youth - EP I knew that Daughter was going to be one to watch from me. I don’t know whether it was the haunting voice, or the reliability of the lyrics at the time, I just remember being distinctly impressed on my first listen.
Daughter carried this through to their first studio album If You Leave, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It was by no means an album of top ten stature, but it was an album that I still enjoy listening too from time to time.
The release of Not To Disappear snuck up on me. I hadn’t read a lot of press about what Daughter were trying to achieve with their second coming, but I decided to dive in a grab myself a copy anyway. Mistake. Mistake, mistake, mistake. I’m all for bands trying to change their sound, but I feel as though with Not To Disappear Daughter have lost their way.
Music is entitled to be sad, emotive and even ’depressing’, provided the ground beneath the song has reason for it to be that way. This is what is missing from Daughter’s album. I had such high hopes, but I am bitterly disappointed. Take Alone/With You for example, it simply doesn’t go anywhere - it’s [pretty much a droning synth laid over a slow drum beat, narrated with a list of things that Daughter hate over the top of it. It has no story, no narrative, it’s dull and most definitely depressing.
The album does have some high points, in fact with New Ways, Numbers and Doing The Right Thing, it actually opens strongly. But I’m afraid from there it is all down hill, and has to go down as an album to avoid from me.
