Daughter get vulnerable on new shoegaze ditty ‘Party’
Shoegaze has never really received a fair place in the charts. While My Bloody Valentine had turned the genre into a household name back in the 1990s, you will never find the droning sounds of guitars next to Billie Eilish and the TikTok of trends today. The music business can be unpredictable, though, and ‘Party’, the latest release from Daughter, presents some of the best that modern shoegaze has to offer and might garner quiet optimism.
From the moment the song begins, a wall of guitars sucks you into the groove as Elena Tonra’s voice soars above the airwaves. The guitar riffs on the single wouldn’t feel out of place on a Slowdive record, but the vocals are much more focused. Taking cues from the modern world of production, Tonra’s voice is right up front in the mix, with the guitars taking more of a backseat role whenever they crop up. While guitars tend to enter the realm of the hypnotic in the world of shoegaze, you never feel lost listening to ‘Party’, a track which plays around the melody while ensuring to keep the song in line.
It’s easy to get sucked into the world of Daughter, but the lyrics are what make ‘Party’ stand out. Torna has a lot to get off her chest, fearing that she’ll forget some of the most important pieces of her life. The verse lyrics cut a lot deeper as Torna unravels the internal voice in the back of her head that she tries to drown out.
Despite having some fuzzy production values, this is a shoegaze song that seems to take influence from the world of folk rock, unafraid to tackle big topics head-on. Some people might use songs as an escape, but ‘Party’ uses the medium to project the nervous energy you usually direct inward. And while most pop songs use ambient tracks to set a dark mood, some of the biggest stars in the world can take a few cues from a song like this. This is how you pull off that uneasy mood.
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