At time of writing it is 3:20am and I just found out that the American noise rock/no-wave band Daughters have a new single out, and now I am listening to it on repeat. This is likely not good for this bout of mild insomnia, but the single is very good so I personally count this as a win.
Daughters have an interesting history, their first album was just 11 minutes long and had 10 songs on it which largely revolve around unintelligible shouting and extremely noisy guitars with exceptional song titles such as I slept with the Daughters and all I got was this lousy song written about me. Their albums after this held back somewhat, in that you can actually work out what the singer is talking about this time. The guitars never really got less noisy. If you were to listen to just one of their 4 albums spanning their 15 year career the best would be the exceptional You Won’t Get What You Want, which is the most polished, mature and well made of them, but they are all worth your time.
But I digress, there is a new single out and I must justify the initial statement of it being ‘very good’. Likely the most on the nose comparison on the cover of the single, comparing the song to The Cramps, which can be heard as clear as day if you listen to their album Off The Bone as well as of course on the . The guitars are modern, but the similarities in play-style between what can be heard on Human Fly and the song they are covering. The guitar tone itself is something I have fallen completely in love with, it encapsulates the american punk sound of the 80’s while refining it to a sharp point and without simply reverting to a distortion pedal believing that’s all you can use to sound punk. The vocals have a Dead Kennedy’s vibe, even down to the vocal ‘shake’ you hear throughout and lyrically it’s fantastic. The drums are, like the rest of the track, a cleaner and better produced version of the constant 4 to the floor you hear in much of early American punk.
This fits as much now as it would as the first single from the new ‘it’ punk band of the 80’s and the track fits comfortably along some of the best of the era while bringing in their own spark of typical Daughters cheek. Though it is of no real surprise that a band such as daughters would take such large amounts of inspiration from 80’s American punk or get involved with such a project as this (Just look at Germs GI). It’s a love letter that was certainly appreciated when looking them up on a whim at 3 in the morning.
