“I feel numb in this kingdom”: Inspiration Through the Music of Daughter

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It is winter and I can move in every way winter can move, unyielding like the newfound crunch in the ground, malleable like the sheet metal skyline, undead like the half buried trees, swaying and skeletal and weightless. This is how I feel when I listen to Daughter, regardless of the season, regardless of the thickness of my socks (which tends to be directly proportional to how cold I am at any given time). 

“Wait for me to degrade before/You go/Killing prey for/Waste of/Daylight/Speaks when/Slumber's keeping/Under the bed/Out of revenge/I'm derailing/My youth has stained our sheets/With some piece of me”

Just the atmosphere of a song can be inspirational. Wordlessness can create gasping existence out of a barren internal silence. At other times, songs are so lyrically relatable that a voice can become a haunt without the help of any instrumental backbone. I’d argue Daughter is one of those bands that have both a resilient atmospheric and lyric presence, able to set a mood or conjure a memory without much effort on the part of the listener. 

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Characteristically melancholic, Daughter marries poetic devices with the orchestral. Strip the music of its lyrics? The emotion remains. Just reading the lyrics? It is the same as reading a poem on a page. While the subject matter of a Daughter song is often as simple as lost love, stale love, loneliness, or loss of innocence—the lyrics reframe these subjects into less formulaic, more euphonic terms, resisting melodrama among desolation. Daughter is inherently poetic and their albums are essential musical sidekicks to any writer (if nu-folk happens to be in the range of your music taste). Each track is like having a prompt at your fingertips. Just press play. 

“I'll wrap up my bones/And leave them/Out of this home/Out on the road,/Two feet standing on a principle/Two hands longing for each other's warmth/Cold smoke seeping out of colder throats/Darkness falling, leaves nowhere to go”

While you shouldn’t expect to become all bubbly or be inspired to write the cheeriest poem you’ve ever penned from listening to Daughter, you can expect to be moved down into levels you may have been reaching for but unable to touch. Not necessarily the depths of abject sorrow, but a place where introspection and pensiveness are more readily accessible. And this is arguably where a lot of good writing stems from. Try free writing anything from your consciousness to songs such as “Numbers.” You’ll notice Daughter’s lyricist Elena Tonra is not only conveying a sentiment, but also playing with language and the sound of words akin to poets:

“Can you clean lace faces?/Black out nights and tight spaces?/We'll feel distant embraces/Scratching hands 'round my waist, yeah/I wish my mouth would still taste you/I feel numb/I feel numb in this kingdom”

Feeling those internal and slant rhymes from any of these songs? Those metaphors giving you that writing itch yet?

“Oh, I won't be your doll/So please don't you ask me to/You see, I don't look so good in yellow/Like other dolls they do”

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Check out Daughter’s official website here. (Get excited, cause they have a new album coming out in January.) 

Click here for an interview with and a look at frontwoman Elena Tonra’s own inspiration for writing.

Digging Daughter? Check out Soley or Chelsea Wolfe.