You Won’t Get What You Want Album Review
Daughters is an experimental noise rock band from Providence Rhode Island. The band was formed in 2002 by vocalist Alexis Marshall, guitarists Nick Sadler and Jeremy Wabiszczewicz, drummer Jon Syverson, and bassist Pat Masterson. The band put out a self-titled EP in March of 2002 and one year later, put out an eleven minute debut album titled Canada Songs. The band went on to release three studio albums before breaking up sometime in 2009. However, the band decided to reunite to create one of the most terrifying pieces of music to ever exist.
You Won’t Get What You Want was released on Oct. 26, 2018 and even as an avid listener of experimental hip-hop bands (like Death Grips)[1], I would consider this to be one of the strangest and scariest pieces of music to ever exist. The first track off this album, “City Song”, begins with an unsettling rhythmic beating that sounds like the fear frequency (19 hz) [2]. This pattern is then joined by a jarring, gunshot-esque snare, slowly building the song until Marshall begins to put in this psychotic and deranged spoken-word singing. This goes on for a while until these very unpleasant synths come to build the song into a frantic, litteral panic-inducing crescendo before dropping into nothing. When I say panic-inducing, I actually mean it. The songs have this ability to induce genuine fear and anxiety due to the creepy, organ-like guitars, cascading drums, nails-on-chalkboard synths, and tortured vocals.
The lyricism of this album tend to be very simple yet beautiful phrases or single words, except for tracks like “Satan in the Wait” where Marshall sings about “That [person] had a head like a matchstick, a face like he was sucking concrete through a straw”. The album’s lyricism does not push any real boundaries or make any social/political statements and seems to be geared more towards trying to make the songs more unsettling (which it does). The lyrics read more like poetry when compared to other modern lyrics, with lines often not rhyming and being more about beauty than practicality.
However, this album is more than slow, haunting songs and does have a few pace changers on it. One such pace changer is the song “Flammable Man” which starts off immediately with Marshall yelling “I don’t lie” over very fast paced drumming from Syverson all while these disturbing guitars are moving backwards and forwards all while twisting around your head, and giving the listener the feeling of being stretched out all while being sucked in and out of a never ending tunnel. This song gives such a powerful feeling of fear and dread that it seems like the sound equivalent of being chased by a serial killer. All of the songs on this album are likely to put you on the edge of your seat due to the sheer anxiety and overwhelming terror they distill. Tracks such as “Satan in the Wait” (where Marshall is psychotically yelling over booming drums and disturbing synths “The world is opening up”) and “Ocean Song” (where Marshall is deeply chanting, “Go, run, go, run” over powerful drum/guitar work, really giving the feeling that the listener needs to run) are haunting and booming but are still oddly catchy, making me want to come back to them a few times.
I am honestly not able to give this album a score because on one hand, this album feels like I am being stabbed by sound, but on the other, the album is able to do that. The lyrics are poetic, beautiful, and often unsettling; the guitars are absolute insanity; the drums are big and control the pace of each and every song perfectly; and the synths are absolutely terrifying but still add a whole new layer to each and every song. This album does not feel like one I could listen to time and time again, but it is definitely an experience that is unique and powerful. In the case of this album, it is not the sound that matters but instead what the sound does. Even as someone who has listened to “death metal” bands, I have never felt legitimate fear from a song, and for that reason, this album deserves praise.
???/10
Give this album a listen for yourself!
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NB7RBZ1yGY&list=OLAK5uy_lRNKcLYcmtc-CHuytwrTRoGgiX54MasxE
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/7w7ZTlk8YLc0OxviTp97qA
Google Play Music:
[1] http://tiny.cc/zkds0y (Youtube)
[2] This song feels like a mixture of To Be Kind from Swans and the song “Hamburger Lady” from Throbbing Gristle.
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