Daughters: The Existential Frustration of Modern Society
Daughters never made music that meant to please. Last year, through You won’t get what you want, they delivered an album that’s a baptism into anxiety and nihilism. The name itself seemed to be a – not very hidden – warning about any possible expectations a listener might have after eight years. If in the past the band had the power to shock, now they’re focused on creating music that devours. With 30,000 albums sold and 20 million streams, Daughters created a record that translates the existential frustration of modern society into music.
“We have no message,” singer Alexis Marshall says. “I’m not trying to convey an ideology or a lifestyle or a way of thinking, but playing – it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. I’ve always played music. I’ve been doing it since I was a teenager. A lot of us have. I didn’t go to college. I didn’t finish high school. I didn’t find a career or become a lawyer or something. I didn’t invent or excel in any of those areas. So this is what I’ve always been doing and by default, it’s just sort of where I still am.”
“[Getting] back together with Nick [Sadler] was something that was finagled by a friend of ours who got us talking,” he added. “But once we got together, it seemed natural. Like, ‘Alright. Let’s write some music. Let’s play. Let’s do this.’ Because it was such a big part of our lives. I mean, the entirety of our twenties and my identity, to some extent. For all of us. It just seems natural to do it now. Again, we’ll do another record. We finished like, ‘Alright, we don’t hate each other. We’re all alive, so let’s do another record. Let’s see how long we can do this for.’”
The year after the release of You won’t get what you want through Ipecac definitely changed Marshall’s prospective about music and being in a band. “I’ve changed more with life experience as opposed to performing as a singer, whatever the hell I am, performer,” he explains. “There’s a natural change of how I view music and art and the performing of these things that changes over time with experience. But that’s more related to my own personal life. You really end up in a vacuum when you’re playing. You’re playing the same songs, you’re with the same people, you go to a lot of the same cities. So it’s kind of easy to feel comfort and just get caught in that and live in a vacuum. I think it’s good to take personal experience and appreciation for other people who are also creating music and apply that to my interpretation and the band’s interpretation, each of us, to what is music and art and processing things in that way. I think it’s very easy to get caught up in just being a musician and living like that and staying there and only focusing on the things that you are.”
If the record clearly shows the maturity of Daughters, their live performances truly embody the band. When frontman Alexis Marshall takes the stage, he completely lets himself be carried away by the music, beating himself with the mic cable, choking himself, spreading saliva, and rhythmically contorting his body. “It’s often to provoke people, but it’s for myself as well,” he confesses. “I feel this push to just do something that is destructive and it comes from probably a really terrible place in me. I think some people will do that because they think it looks cool and they want the attention, that kind of thing, but I just don’t think that lasts. If that’s your mindset, you won’t live that way. You’re going to get tired of it.”
“I don’t prepare for it,” Marshall continues. “I just do it. I don’t need to psyche myself up. I just play. And then when I’m not playing, I’m the same person. I think people probably assume that it’s very different. Or if it’s not, I’m like at home cutting myself or doing something like that. It’s just the performances, the extremes of my personality and that’s all it is. I’m the same person. There’s no distinction between the two. It’s just that sometimes I’m in a place and sometimes I’m on stage. And I behave accordingly. When I go to my kids’ birthday parties or the parents’, I’m not like a fucking maniac.”
“I’m not a scary person,” he adds. “I don’t think that people should be afraid to say hello to me or admire me in any way. I’m terribly uncomfortable most of the time being around people. If I’m in a group of more than four people, I just stop talking. I’m not a competitive person and I don’t compete for attention. I don’t like to. I’ll be mostly quiet in groups. I’m just singing songs. There’s nothing extraordinary about me or anything that I’m doing. I’m just performing.”
Supported on stage by longtime guitarist Nicholas Sadler, drummer Jon Syverson, and bassist Sam Walker, who are each moving frantically from riff to riff in a constant state of motion on either side, it isn’t easy being the frontman of Daughters. “I know some people find it like a cathartic experience to perform and they feel better afterword,” he says. “But I don’t ever feel better, or that I had some problem that I got to play and I worked it out. For me it’s much the opposite. I try to not take too much personal shit onto the stage with me because it will affect how I play. I’m only capable of doing so much because I’m not an accomplished vocalist. So I do what I can with myself physically and interacting with people and climbing on things or whatever it is, and that’s sort of what becomes my instrument as opposed to people that actually have to hold an instrument and become preoccupied in that. I just have my voice and, yeah, there’s quite a bit of exhibitionism. People are looking at me and I’m not oblivious to that. Sometimes I’ll do something that’s an attempt to illicit a reaction. Sometimes I’ll do things, I’ll hurt myself because I want to know what it will feel like. Playing is sort of my time.”
This need to communicate is easily found in the lyrics that Marshall writes. “My past is part of who I am so, I’m always trying to process things and deal with them. That’s just part of who I am. I don’t know. It’s hard sometimes,” he acknowledges. “I don’t talk about feelings, but the characters are often experiencing some emotional or mental state that I’m in. I would never claim to have completely fabricated this. People write literature and novels and I have trouble trying to get my head around it because I don’t know how to create that experience that I’ve never had. There are times when I’m writing about a character that’s a reflection of myself and other times when I’m not, but I tend more often to draw from what I’ve experienced and some state that I’ve been in, that I’m currently in, or that I may not be in at the moment but have struggled with or haven’t thought about in twenty years. But it’s inside of me and it’s in my head and I get it out. It’s not always good.”
The result is an album that’s an anxiety-inducing nightmare ode to human conflict, a denial of harmony and altruism. “I think humanity is hopeless, and I felt that even before I ever went to Auschwitz concentration camp,” he says. “Ben Chisholm from Chelsea Wolfe said to me, ‘
We played Off Festival last year. You should go to Auschwitz, it’s only like 20 minutes away. It’ll ruin your day, but you should go.’ Thanks to Ben, I went in and cried and wandered around and touched bricks and had this terrible feeling. Then it started raining and pouring rain and I just stood in the rain in the fucking concentration camp. I would never pretend to have felt anything beyond myself there, because I could not imagine what that’s like. That fucked me up. There are people who brought people there and kept them there and fucking murdered them. And that was in some way acceptable to them. And I really don’t see that we’ve grown as a society or as a species or anything. I don’t think it’s gotten any better. I think it still exists in various forms and it’s upsetting but this is the world we live in. We have to deal with it,” Marshall adds.
“As a human being I’m happy with what we’ve done and I look forward to doing more with this band. I’m pretty proud of that. And I’m a father and it’s great and it’s difficult. It’s hard shit but it’s worth it. Nothing worth it is easy.” ∎
Daughters live at House of Independents, Asbury Park.
“My past is part of who I am so, I’m always trying to process things and deal with them. That’s just part of who I am. I don’t know. It’s hard sometimes”
Daughters: The Existential Frustration of Modern Society
WORDS: MARIKA ZORZI
PHOTOGRAPHY: A.F. CORTÉS