“Stereo Mind Game”
3/5 ***
English indie-folk and shoegaze trio Daughter released their fourth album, “Stereo Mind Game,” on April 7, 2023. This album is their first studio effort in six years, following “Music from Before the Storm” in 2017. The band consists of frontwoman Elena Tonra on vocals, Igor Haefeli on guitar and Remi Aguilella on drums.
Daughter’s earlier works pride themselves on completely drenching the listener in melancholia. Currents of synths, guitars and drums score Tonra’s dry poetry, reflecting her lamentations in endless coats of reverb. It’s a juxtaposition explored on one of their best songs, “Smother,” detailing lineage and loss with one of the most enrapturing choruses I have ever heard. Indeed, Daughter truly takes the listener somewhere else, a world immersed in cough-syrupy, harrowing narratives.
Obviously, given their interest in these complex, sad emotions, Daughter was shaken by the pandemic—one of the reasons for their six-year hiatus. Themes of long distances, phone calls and losing love thread “Stereo Mind Game” together into a dense and buzzing state of grief. They sought to explore this not only with their lyrics, but also with their instrumentation on “Stereo Mind Game.”
The lead single for this album, “Be On Your Way,” reads as an idyllic precursor to the unraveling of the rest of the tracklist documents. Its expansive and distant instrumentation contrasts with lyrical worries of repetition: “I won’t hold you back / Time throws us around.” It explores this tension of yearning and independence with crescendoing bass and propelling percussion, panned beautifully in the mix.
“Party,” with its much drier and direct instrumentation, bangs nastily against boneless guitars and harsh drums. Despite being one of my favorites from this record, my first problem with the album develops here: Daughter, commentating on this pandemic grief, mimics its density almost too well. Many of the instrumentals play off as — ironically enough — stereo. They collapse their otherwise open-aired sound into one singularity, mirroring isolation.
While “Party” executes its density well through shoegaze passages and touches of panned electric guitars, many of the other tracks here fail to reach that same high. The drums and bass in “Dandelion” choke the vocals and guitar, monolithic in their performance. Even the reverb-drenched hooks that lap at the edge of the song are too shallow; there is not a pocket of oxygen in the tsunami that is this song’s mix. It’s a shame: the acoustic guitar performs incredibly well here, only to be drowned out by the track’s low end.
“Neptune” replaces that claustrophobia with synths and space, where Tonra’s vocals cling to the center of the mix righteously. For how subterranean the instrumental of this track is, the melodies Tonra navigates poke through almost too obliquely. The introduction of the group vocals, cymbals and dabbling bass on the last leg help to compose a more uniform wall of sound that pulses wonderfully.
It’s not that I dislike this density; “Swim Back,” the heaviest cut on this entire album, is one of Daughter’s best songs to date. Its steady bass line earns its centerfold position through sheer euphoric pounding. Their use of shoegaze textures comes to full blossom, containing a caffeinated excitement within the size of a marble. Metallic textures scrape the heights of the guitar with experimental ecstasy, opening a window into the track’s heat. Somehow, the rather surprising string bridge fits in very well here. It’s an incredibly fun listen.
Experimentation continues onto “Junkmail” with much less payoff. Every aspect of this track is idiosyncratic: Tonra’s spoken delivery, the winding percussion, clicking guitar harmonics, strings and bass keeping focus through it all. These ideas are incredibly innovative on their own; however, when combined, it becomes difficult to decipher. The lack of dynamic contrast contributes to its density, not finding a resting point across its four-minute runtime.
“Future Lover” highlights similar issues. Daughter attempts to include fragmented electric guitars into their percussion along with a shallow drum machine. While the vocals, lyrics and bass performance flower, they are drowned out by these frankly unnecessary additions. The band knows this song is special, but they overindulged in its potential to propel “Junkmail”’s experimental flare. One of my favorite lyrics is sung here, however: “Sweet nothings from a ghost in the room / Gets so heavy when I think of you.”
“(Missed Calls),” an interlude, helps alleviate this headache, as well as the much more concise “Isolation.” Daughter refocuses on Tonra’s vocals, backed by an acoustic guitar and occasional chirping synths. Harmonies putter here and there, meditating on how “the odds are stacked against us.” While not one of my favorite tunes, I appreciate this moment for clearing the smoke and delivering clarity to an otherwise muddy middle leg.
Thematically, “To Rage” calls back to the instrumental of “Party” and “Be On Your Way,” letting go of the complex textures in place of licks, reminiscent of Slowdive, which keep composure. The pandemic grief Daughter tries to achieve on “Stereo Mind Game” is at its best here—understated instrumentally, overstated lyrically. “Where were you when I needed you most?” Tonra asks. I find the shift at the three-and-a-half-minute mark too explicit, but it makes sense to end the album this way—if it actually ended here.
The album in reality finishes with “Wish I Could Cross the Sea,” a dangling question mark left at the end of the record. Its lyrical abstracts feel independent from the rest of the songs’ narratives, calling to “nocturnal little animals.” While I love its instrumental—spacious drums, fuzzy ambience, hazy strings—this cut reads as a mandatory curtain-closer, fading away on an unanswered minor chord.
While Daughter offers some incredible songs on “Stereo Mind Game,” their focus on density and experimentation often manifests as the album’s most detrimental moments. I would recommend giving this a listen, though. The moments that shine here truly are something special.