Review Summary: Everything that you want.
I have this old yellow Daughters shirt that I wear all of the time. Big block letters and a bat with a vagina for a face adorns the front. It's really fun because Daughters are really fun.
You Won't Get What You Want, on the other hand, is not fun. It’s dark and weird, teasing anything remotely beautiful only in its last moments. After eight years of silence, Daughters have returned with an album that ironically gives you what you want, but maybe not what you expect.
You Won't Get What You Want is nontraditional in its atmospheric and plodding delivery. Whereas the band's 2010 self-titled record flew out of the gates like a vagina-bat out of hell with "The Virgin", "City Song" acts as a much more rhythmic and understated stage setter. Longer form exercises in mood such as "Satan in the Wait" and "Less Sex" fuel this bewitching aesthetic narrative by emphasizing the backdrop of Daughters' sound, rather than the embellishments that they have become known for. The dissonant and uneasy feeling which lay under the surface is now at the forefront.
You Won't Get What You Want is still chaotic in its own unsettling way; peculiar guitar tones and ritualistic percussion saturates even the most subdued songs which feel very much "on brand." That
Daughters-era flair is still present with quick hits like "The Flammable Man" and "The Lords Song," but even those in their own way are comparatively
weird.
Daughters are back, but not as they were before. They’re still impossible to define, with “noise rock” being a pretty good catch all for their odd brand of industrial, post-punk and mathcore brew. But whatever voodoo made their unapproachable sound so damn fun and cathartic is completely gone. In its place is a something altogether darker and uglier, but ultimately more brilliant and enrapturing than ever before.
You Won't Get What You Want is Daughters finest moment and everything I’ve wanted.
