REVIEW: If You Leave by Daughter

Daughter

    Daughter’s If You Leave, opens with an instrumental piece that sounds almost like a train.  This little piece just filled me with hope, reminiscent of “Strawberry Fields “Forever” or “Back In the U.S.S.R.”, but if the start of the major part of that opening track, “Winter”, filled me with despair.  As did the rest of the album actually.

    Elena Tonra has a beautiful voice.  It’s a dreamy combination of Florence Welch and Florence Welch.  (That was not a typo.)  It is a lovely voice, and she is immensely talented, but music is not just about talent.  It is about what you do with that talent. Tracyanne Campbell, of Camera Obscura, has a similarly angelic voice which she uses to create a classic 50s vibe.  I feel like Camera Obscura is singing directly to me, and I’m a badboy greaser who has broken poor Tracyanne’s heart.  Annie Clark, better known as St. Vincent, brings me to a strange world where her pain is my pain.  Ingrid Michaelson creates a beautiful image of young love.

    This innocent, light voice can be a great asset in pushing a dramatic point.  It can scream that I am young, and I have experienced too much or I want to experience more.  

But Elena Tonra tries to lose this voice.  She tries to mature the album by singing in a choppy, lower range.  While she tries to be Patti Smith, the attention-seeking instrumentals want to be Coldplay.

Just imagine Florence Welch trying to be Patti Smith backed by Coldplay playing excruciatingly loudly.   It’s a truly painful thought.

    The sad thing is Daughter is filled with talent, but they need to focus it.  It is not the radio-play type of talent, but that is not the goal in life.  They need to mellow out a bit, take it down a notch.  Other sweet-voiced female vocalists (I’m not being sexist, I’m a girl) have found their niche, and Daughter needs to think long and hard about what this for them. The album is not coherent, despite the simplicity of the single word titles and lyrics.  It sounds like the complaints of a sad white girl, which Elena is by all means.  But it is not a progressive sadness.  There are great sad albums and sad bands, but the sadness is more like an insecurity--it has not yet occurred and there is no reason for the discord and depression.

    Music is all about the vibe created by the combination of raw emotion, writing, instrumentals, and vocals.  There is some emotion.  There is writing.  There are instruments.  There are vocals.  But these things are not cohesive on If You Leave, making the album seem like a mopy teenage girl.

What Daughter Sounds Like