Review - Daughters @ the Bottom of the Hill (11/11/18)

Daughters' Alexis Marshall @ Bottom of the Hill (Photo: Kevin Keating - f/2.8 1/60 ISO 6400)

This past Sunday night, the Bottom of the Hill featured the second of two back-to-back sold out shows for noise rockers, Daughters. The four-piece with a cult-like following have just released their newest album, You Won't Get What You Want (iTunes) on October 26th — their first on San Francisco’s Ipecac Recordings — and fourth album overall after an 8-year hiatus. The band launched a limited US tour that luckily enough, included these two dates in SF.

I’ll admit that I missed the boat on these guys over the years, and I’m not familiar with their earlier albums which have been described as extreme experimental, math rock, and grind core — which are probably a bit too far out for my personal tastes. But their new album is a bit of a departure from their earlier material (from what I understand), and again, not being familiar with their prior albums, I can only form an opinion based on the new release which I’ve been listening to for the past few weeks. It’s a dark album with industrial influences infused with what I’ll call 'punk-like sensibilities' and vocals that fluctuate from being sung (and not screamed as I’ve read their earlier albums featured) to more of a spoken-word poetic license on a few of the tracks that resonated the most with me -- such as "Satan in the Wait" that I've embedded below.



Whatever the ‘label’ given to the band’s body of work: noise rock, experimental, grind core, etc.; the live incarnation is loud, passionate, and hard to contain, let alone describe. Augmented with two extra players on this tour, including a keyboardist and extra guitarist, the live 6-piece didn’t have much room to move around the already cramped Bottom of the Hill stage. However, lead singer Alexis Marshall did his best to give his band mates some extra space by frequently jumping into the audience to crowd surf — or scaling the outer ledges of the stage into the crowd — something I’ve never seen before at the Bottom of the Hill!

Daughters' Alexis Marshall @ Bottom of the Hill (Photo: Kevin Keating - f/2.8 1/60 ISO 10000)

With that said, I was glad to see the addition of their live keyboardist who added the electronic industrial sonic landscapes to their live performance last night, reminiscent of the sound on their new album. Beyond that, at its core, the performance was a circular release of energy that started onstage, fed into the audience, and was absorbed back into the band that continued for roughly 75 minutes. Simply put, the band’s seventh member was the audience and Alexis did his best to include the impassioned crowd in his performance. The front half of the venue was consistently a swirling mass of people that enveloped anyone remotely close to the outer edges of the spastic mosh pit throughout the vast majority of the set.

Daughters' Alexis Marshall @ Bottom of the Hill (Photo: Kevin Keating - f/2.8 1/60 ISO 10000)

Daughters certainly aren’t a mainstream act, but their raw performance was impressive last night and I’m glad I was able to make it to the show. To see if they’ll hit your town, you can check out their upcoming tour dates here, and be sure to give them a listen to see if they’re your cup of tea.

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