Daisyhead

In Case You Missed It

Written by: TL on 29/07/2017 11:18:59

The Nashville quartet Daisyhead had an interesting debut in 2015 with "The Smallest Light" and have returned this year with a follow-up titled "In Case You Missed It". Here they continue working with their style - which lies somewhere in between the heart-on-sleeve emo of Have Mercy and the brooding nu-gaze of Citizen - over eleven new tracks, which are drenched in noisy pedal effects and filled with melancholic melodies and chord-progressions which should pique the ears of fans of pre-"Bleed American" emo in particular.

When Daisyhead are at their best on the new record, it's on "Bodies" and particularly on "Common Ground". These are some of the more driving and powerful tracks on the album, where the music surges and it sounds like the band gets some of their demons exorcized at least somewhat. The mood seems shitty overall, with issues of rejection, abandonment and resulting lack of self-worth being central lyrically, but in the mentioned tracks, the reaction to these emotions is at least a bit bitter, which works well.

There are, however, several moments where the narration is a lot more wallowing, which changes it from something you can feel sympathy for, to something more pathetic that you just kind of have to pity, and that gets grating to listen to quite a lot sooner. Songs like "Ready For The World" and "Tv Song" moves from a Have Mercy atmosphere past Seahaven and even past Hawthorne Heights, ending up somewhere where you just feel like seizing the narrator by the shoulders, shaking him and telling him to get a grip.

The vocal performance and lyricism thus feel uneven and have room for improvement, yet the instrumental side of things holds up rather solidly. It might not revolutionize emo's stylistic conversation in any dramatic way, but it channels the catharsis-through-distortion-and-moody-chords atmosphere rather nicely, and in terms of energy and dynamics there's more than enough happening to keep feet tapping and heads bopping through more than a handful of listens.

The overall verdict then, is that there's a song or three here to mark as favourites, even if the album doesn't really bring it home as a back-to-back listen, and that there's reason to hope for more from Daisyhead moving forward, but that one would also hope for them to find either a glimmer of optimism or perhaps just have some more flashes of either anger or perspective, so as to better tip-toe the line of emo in a more consistently tasteful way.

Download: Common Ground, Bodies, Don't Feel Bad
For The Fans Of: Have Mercy, Citizen, Seahaven
Listen: facebook.com/daisyheadtn

Release date 28.04.2017
No Sleep Records

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