🔗 Share this article

In this song "Miss America", audiences find themselves in a hotel room near JFK airport, where the musician learns a devastating update of her father's illness discovery. This Sunderland-born artist had been touring America for the first time, playing with group Kero Kero Bonito, and abruptly sadness casts a shadow, tinging everything with melancholy. Faltering piano and hushed strings underscore gothic dispatches from the road: "Rural scenes and crumbling homes / Shopping centers, illicit trades, anxious moments."

Walton's soft vocals are delivered in a flat manner, yet the record's tension arises from her sharp writing—mixing fiction, traditional phrases, and blunt personal notes—coupled with surprising rich textures. Not many tracks this year possess more potent storytelling style than "Shelly", a piece that describes the killing of a deer and spirals into a petrol-laden reckoning, reminiscent of literary works lit by flickers of distorted strings. Anxious, subdued sections with resonating, plucked strings transition to grand choruses, with Walton's vocals electronically altered into something omniscient and menacing.

Listeners might already be familiar with Walton as a music creator, disc jockey, and member in groups like Caroline. Daughters' sonic turns reflect her varied background. The opener "Sometimes" erupts with flourish, as if a string band taken unawares, whereas "Born Again Backwards" radically increases the tempo with a punishing, beautiful, repeating percussion. Thick walls of sound, expertly mixed by a long-term collaborator, seem at once gnarly and spiritual, and Walton's morbid, magical thoughts peak in highlight "Lambs", which briefly transforms into a twirling dance. "May your life never end in death," she bargains, with heart-aching dark comedy.