It’s been seven years since we last heard from the London folk-rock trio Daughter, back when Elena Tonra, Igor Haefeli and Remi Aguilella shared their ode to elusive aggression ‘Not To Disappear’. Since, they’ve soundtracked the video game Life Is Strange: Before The Storm and took time to focus on individual projects, with Tonra releasing a self-titled solo effort under her project Ex:Re in 2018.
Still, they continued to write together, spending that time away recording across the world, all the while slowly moving away from the fragile sadness of their 2013 debut, ‘If You Leave’. With ‘Stereo Mind Game’, Daughter marks a new era of tending to sorrow instead of dwelling in it, where the band wading into new wider ranges of emotion without leaving behind the rich orchestration and poetic lyricism they’re known for.
Daughter broke their silence back in January with the album’s lead single ‘Be On Your Way’. In the meditative track, Tonra’s vocals loom over sparse instrumentation as she tells the story of a missed connection; at the time of the track’s release, Tonra was candid about its inspiration, sharing that the story focuses on someone she met in California while writing the album and the dissolution they faced thanks to the Atlantic-sized gap between them. Daughter’s delicate soundscapes convey the complex emotions of what she says was an “enduring connection that is also indefinable”, perfectly mirroring the open-ended relationship in the space between the lyrics, percussion and rising synths.
The theme of being separated from love continues in the immersive ‘Swim Back’, the song featuring the London-based orchestra, The 12 Ensemble, arranged by guitarist Haefeli. Daughter took the plunge literally, recording the ensemble at former swimming spot and current south London studio, The Pool. Their attention to detail pays off, as the track kicks into a kinetic beat, string arrangements and Tonra’s distorted vocals yearning to find connection in a relationship, as she reveals, “the wait is brutal, just disintegrates / We talk in riddles, then give up and go / We are so vague.”
On ‘Party’, Daughter strip back their intricate production and turn the light away from interpersonal relationships and onto the relationships we have with ourselves. Written in the lead-up to Tonra going sober, the song plays witness to a spiralling inner monologue: “Refuse to believe that there’s a problem / You see I could stop if I want” she explains in the song. At one point, she recalls trying to “creep the volume up” in her head to drown out her inner dialogue, referring to the practice as “some stereo mind game I play with myself.”
The song stands in contrast to many of the moments in the album that focus on feeling emotions acutely and instead outlines the human desire to protect yourself by tuning out any feelings at all. ‘Party’s hooks, candid lyricism on the complexity of the human experience, and simple arrangements combine to shape the brightest track on ‘Stereo Mind Game’. It makes perfect sense that Daughter lifted the album title from it, then.
