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In the track "Miss America", audiences are placed inside a lodging near JFK airport, as the musician learns a devastating update that her dad has cancer diagnosis. This Sunderland-born artist was traveling America on her initial visit, drumming alongside group Kero Kero Bonito, when suddenly sadness takes over, tinging everything in grey. Faltering piano and hushed strings accompany dark dispatches emanating from the tour van: "Cattle farm and broke down shack / Shopping centers, illicit trades, anxious moments."

Her soft vocals are delivered with a flat manner, while the album's intensity stems from the keen penmanship—mixing fiction, folksy sayings, and blunt personal notes—coupled with surprising maximalism. Few songs this year showcase more potent novelistic style than "Shelly", which describes the killing of a deer and spirals toward a petrol-laden confrontation, evoking literary pieces lit by glimpses of warped cello. Anxious, subdued verses with echoing, strummed guitar transition to expansive choruses, with Walton's vocals digitally manipulated into something omniscient and menacing.

Audiences may previously be familiar with Walton from her work as an electronic producer, disc jockey, and contributor in groups like Caroline. Daughters' musical twists reflect this varied career. The opener "Sometimes" bursts with flourish, as if a string band taken by surprise, whereas "Born Again Backwards" radically ups the tempo via an intense, stunning, repeating percussion. Dense layers of audio, skillfully produced by a long-term partner, seem both gnarly and ethereal, and her dark, enchanted thinking peak on standout "Lambs", which momentarily transforms into a swirling jig. "I hope your existence doesn't conclude with dying," she pleads, with poignant gallows humor.