"Expressing your emotions isn’t a weakness," says Elena Tonra in a press release for Not To Disappear, "but a real strength. I think with this album, there’s less hiding."
With their second album, Daughter have taken their talent for piercing understatement - both lyrically and musically - and twisted it into a new form. One that's less oblique, less coy about its intentions.
If the song's lead single, 'Doing The Right Thing', had been released on the band's debut LP, they might have been tempted to throw several layers of metaphor over its narrative, like a protective cloak designed to evade interpretation. Instead, they've offered it up in its rawest form.
"Then I'll lose my children / Then I'll lose my love," sings Tonra, putting herself in the place of a person suffering from Alzheimer's, as a bass riff echoes her melody, an imprint of an already eroding memory. "Then I'll sit in silence / Let the pictures soak."
Later, the song takes that complicated cocktail of emotions - of guilt, fear and hopelessness - that come from seeing a person's identity being ripped away from them, and stems them with the oft-repeated, though never fully believed mantra: "And you know you are doing the right thing. You must know you are doing the right thing."
The rest of the album lives in this same space, a space in which there is nowhere to hide, in which feelings are offered unfiltered and unashamed - "There’s only been one time where we fucked, and I felt like a bad memory" - and uncovers a newfound strength because of it.
Elena Tonra is right - there's strength in emotion. And Daughter are about as strong as they come.
Not To Disappear is set for release this Friday (15 January). Pre-order it here.
