🔗 Share this article

In the track "Miss America", audiences are placed inside a lodging close to JFK airport, as the musician learns the heartbreaking news of her father's illness discovery. This UK-raised artist was traveling America on her initial visit, playing alongside indie band Kero Kero Bonito, and suddenly grief takes over, tinging all in grey. Unsteady keys and hushed orchestration accompany gothic dispatches from the tour van: "Cattle farm and broke down shack / Shopping centers, illicit trades, anxious moments."

Walton's soft vocals come across with a flat style, yet this album's tension stems from the sharp penmanship—mixing fiction, traditional phrases, and blunt personal notes—along with surprising rich textures. Not many tracks this year possess more potent novelistic style than "Shelly", a piece that depicts the death of a deer and descends toward a fuel-soaked confrontation, evoking written pieces illuminated by flickers of warped cello. Anxious, subdued verses featuring resonating, plucked guitar transition into expansive refrains, and her vocals digitally manipulated into a presence omniscient and sinister.

Audiences might already be familiar with Walton from her work as an electronic producer, DJ, and member to bands such as Caroline. Daughters' musical twists reflect her diverse background. The opener "Sometimes" bursts with fanfare, as if an ensemble taken by surprise, while "Born Again Backwards" radically increases the tempo via a punishing, beautiful, repeating drum fill. Dense walls of sound, expertly produced by a longtime partner, seem at once rough and ethereal, while Walton's dark, enchanted thinking peak in standout "Lambs", a song that momentarily becomes a swirling jig. "I hope your existence doesn't conclude with dying," she pleads, with poignant dark comedy.