If the releases this year have taught us anything, it’s that hotly anticipated records are a dangerous business. Sure, you could end up like Justin Timberlake and sell a billion (yes, that’s an exaggeration) records in the first week, but you could also attempt the same feat and leave a lot of people disinterested. When you ask people to wait for something forever, they have forever to let their imaginations run wild and postulate just how good and game-changing it must be, simply because it’s taken so long to make. The end result is rarely as amazing as the finished product was in your mind. While Daughter’s long anticipated debut it by no means as much of a let down as many anticipated records, it suffers some of the same perception problems.
We fell in love with Daughter back in 2011 with the incredible His Young Heart EP, a love that only intensified with the amazing The Wild Youth EP and the single, “Smother”. Though the delicately melodic voice of singer Elena Tonra, lush instrumentation and dark drums are as immediately captivating on this debut as they were on those much loved EPs, the sound itself is less new. Granted, after the first three tracks, all of which were previously released up to a year ago, the album starts to delve a little deeper.
If You Leave really takes off about halfway through the record, when the group finally starts expanding their sound. “Lifeforms” and “Human” both have the trademarks of Daughter: sad lyrics, Tonra’s powerhouse vocals and interplay between the quiet jangling guitar and brontosaurus drums, but they also expand and breathe. “Human” particularly veers off into new directions, with acoustic guitar adding a more solid ground to the band’s usual airy lightness. It’s not a happy song by any means, but it’s almost upbeat. For a band that came out of the gate with such a fully formed and distinct sound, these slight changes are immediately refreshing and interesting.
By and large, If You Leave sticks to the sad, moody songs that Daughter has become known for, and that’s by no means a bad thing. The record becomes less of a rehashing and more of a step forward, though, during moments when the band tries something ever so slightly different. After two years of waiting, it couldn’t possibly be everything we wanted, but it’s still a fantastic debut from a band that promises to be both faithful to their following and exciting to watch grow.
