Sold out and packed to maximum capacity, the Showbox at the Market was emanating excitement as the crowd eagerly awaited the London band Daughter to take stage on March 19.
Show opener Wilsen took the stage and mesmerized a sea of anxiety ridden twenty-somethings to the point of hypnotism. It's hard enough for a supporting band to keep people entertained, yet the British-born, NYC-based singer-songwriter and her band had them cheering and staring at the stage with a bleary determination as they performed songs from her 2014 EP and forthcoming LP. Wilsen:
While the crowd was dismayed to see her go, they were eager for Daughter to arrive, as the Showbox filled with so much smoke you would hardly know when Daughter went on.
There are a few things that can/might/will definitely happen when a headliner walks onstage:
1. Deafening screaming from all angles, bouncing off of every wall and surface and deeply piercing your eardrums so that it sounds like one very loud scream that lives inside of your ear itself.
2. Everybody in front, beside, and behind you will stand on their tiptoes and start snapping pictures of the drummer adjusting his seat before they even start playing.
3. Somehow, the tallest man in the entire world finds his way right in front of you, and decides that he, too, needs to video the band walking onstage.
At the Daughter show, all of the above happened - but what else would you expect? (I am still periodically flicking the side of my face to see if my hearing will ever return back to normal - it's been less than 24 hours and I'm hopeful.) It's an odd dynamic when there's so much energy and astonishment for a band to walk onstage and then play slow and sullen songs, but that's what you come to a Daughter show for, and it was, for lack of a better word, awesome.
As the band weaved delicately through older songs and into their new album, Not to Disappear, the intensity remained. Between songs, some of the guys, particularly the ones with man-buns, would yell out "I LOVE YOU!" or "I WANT TO HAVE YOUR BABIES!" Daughter's Elena Tonra played it off perfectly, with lots of giggles and charm. By the end of the concert, I myself was almost yelling out those things.
Towards the end of the show, Tonra herself started giggling so hard that they had to restart a song. It was so goddamn charming, I found myself smiling like an idiot, and in that moment I gave up every effort to try and look cool. Elena continuously thanked the crowd as if this wasn't a nightly occurrence for the dark haired beauty. The vocals, drums, and bass heavy melodies were perfect throughout the band's entire set, a cause for lots of stunned faces and teary eyes. Overall, the show was consistently flawless, unforgettable, and, at times I had to pinch myself to make sure that I wasn't dreaming.
When the band played arguably their most popular song, "Youth", the phones were out again, video cameras blazing, the entire crowd screamed along. And if you're in love, then you are the lucky one, 'Cause most of us are bitter over someone.
Daughter:
All photos:
By the end of Greg Dulli's second set of the night at The Triple Door, there were an atypically low number of dead bodies that had sung about by the Cincinnati songwriter. But while the fictional body count remained low, there were a few overeager audience members that might have pushed up the numb…
"Everybody wants to be in a big black coat", Jeremy Greenspan sings on the title track from new Junior Boys LP, Big Black Coat (read our review, "everybody wants to have your style". Truly, few electronic bands have style like this Ontario duo. While Greenspan sings softly, Matt Didemus stands in h…
