Visionary Debut "Daughters" Blends Organic and Electronic Sounds in Powerful Exploration of Grief

Walton's debut album "Daughters," released in the past year, has been hailed as a visionary work that transports the artist from the underground to the foreground. As a maximalist take on the disarray and distortions of grief, the album has drawn comparisons to the capacity for terror and awe found in the music of Phil Elverum, as well as the machine-anaesthetized intimacy of claire rousay and the furiously detailed intensity of Hakushi Hasegawa and Sufjan Stevens.

Walton's most distinctive trademark is in how she crushes together intricate, organic instrumentation and synths into pummelling cataclysms. The album's landscape is majestic in its desolation, marked by rattling barns, clapboard houses, and infinite skies. Walton's songwriting keys into unavoidably painful and prosaic moments, like sitting "hunched and sick in the concourse" of a hospital, but she also contrasts the drawing of blood with praying for mercy. The album's aggressive beauty, desperation, and invention leave the listener undone by Walton's cosmic and mundane evocations of grief.