🔗 Share this article

Within the song "Miss America", listeners are placed inside a lodging close to JFK airfield, as the musician learns the heartbreaking update of her father's cancer diagnosis. This UK-raised artist was touring America for the first time, drumming with indie band Kero Kero Bonito, when suddenly grief casts a shadow, coloring all in grey. Faltering piano and hushed strings accompany gothic dispatches from the tour van: "Cattle farm and broke down shack / Shopping centers, illicit trades, anxious moments."

Walton's soft singing are delivered with a flat manner, while the record's tension arises from the sharp writing—mixing fiction, folksy sayings, and blunt diary entries—along with surprising rich textures. Few songs recently possess stronger novelistic style than "Shelly", which depicts the death of a deer and spirals into a petrol-laden confrontation, evoking literary pieces lit by flickers of warped cello. Tense, quiet verses with echoing, strummed guitar transition to grand choruses, and her voice digitally manipulated to become a presence all-knowing and sinister.

Audiences might previously be familiar with Walton from her work as a music creator, disc jockey, and member to bands like Caroline. Daughters' sonic turns reflect this varied background. The opener "Sometimes" bursts in fanfare, as if an ensemble taken by surprise, while "Born Again Backwards" drastically ups the tempo with a punishing, beautiful, repeating percussion. Thick layers of audio, skillfully mixed with a long-term partner, seem at once gnarly and spiritual, and Walton's dark, magical thinking peak on standout "Lambs", a song that briefly becomes a twirling jig. "May your life never end in death," Walton bargains, exuding heart-aching dark comedy.