Glass talks to Elena Tonra of Daughter

London-based three-piece Daughter, have gone from being a BBC-introducing act to a cult indie-folk band. Now, nearly three years after their debut album If You Leave, on 4AD, Daughter are back with a second album Not To Disappear, which stands as their most serious work to date.

Glass spoke to front-woman Elena Tonra about the new album.

You recorded your album in Brooklyn, New York. Why did you choose there?
We chose it because we wanted to work with Nicolas Vernhes who has his studio in Brooklyn. We thought it would be really cool to record in Brooklyn as well as be in somebody else’s space, especially when they’ve got all their gear around.

Having him come to us in London would mean we wouldn’t get to be in his work environment. I’m really glad we did because the studio is really amazing. We found we were instantly calm and focused in there, and he’s got so many toys and gear so we were geeking out and having a whale of a time. We’d written the album already, but it was nice to have a new, fresh exciting place to be in.

Daughter. Photograph: FJ Allen

Since If You Leave, how has the music evolved?
Since then, I think we have more of a direct sound. Even in terms of literally having less reverb, there’s less cloud. In terms of the atmosphere vocal-wise it’s quite worrying because I love hiding behind reverb – I guess that’s kind of my jam, but to turn it down and have a vocal that’s really direct and raw sounding was a really interesting thing to do. It feels like more of a confident leap. In terms of writing I’ve left behind the poetry, and instead have started to sound like more of a ranting mad lady.

In your single Doing The Right Thing, you cover the theme of memory loss. What inspired that?
My Grandmother. It’s strange because when I go into writing stuff I never think about what I’m going to write or go “I’m going to write a song about this”, it just tends to come out naturally. So, that song started about something completely different then drifted into how I feel about my grandmother and how my mother is coping with my grandmother’s dementia.

In your last album you cover themes of sadness and heartbreak. Is that always the case with when you write?
Yes. It’s always a representation of how I’m feeling. What’s really dangerous is when I write something and record it – then when it comes out I’m looking at a memory of the person I was a year ago, so it’s interesting to realise that I’m sometimes more affected by something than I want to admit. Then I read back what I wrote and be like “Oh, that’s how I feel. I’ve been supressing that for years”.

It’s strange because I feel like I need to learn more about myself in listening back to the songs. Everything I write is written from personal experience, and everything is like a collection and I go around collecting experiences – whether it’s what people have said to me or a memory, and they store up in my head until at one point they all fall out into song form. All of it comes from a real place. It’s nothing abstract

Who were the big musical influences growing up, and how have they affected the writer you are now?
My big idol when I was younger was Jeff Buckley, and he still is. I’d never heard that kind of music before, and that for me was the shifting point between the song form and writing that I had been into before. It’s those sweeping complex melodies that are still full of sadness and honesty. I thought that was really cool. He combined a lot of things I liked in a way I’d never heard before. He was my main hero.

When I was younger, I’d love to hang out with other musicians or go and watch people play, then I made friends with the Communion Records gang and at the time they were having lots of nights in London where people would play folk music. I really liked that. There’s something about listening to a songwriter tell you their secrets for an hour. It’s therapy. Cook it up and spill. Spill all your secrets on people in a dark room!

You’ve supported artists like The National and Ben Howard, but how does it feel to be selling out your own headline shows?
It’s really amazing, but I think we have a lot to learn – in terms of stage presence and stuff we’re pretty awkward. We watched The National and Ben Howard every night when we were touring with them, and it’s always amazing. I’m always so inspired by them because I always feel like an absolute wreck when I’m on stage. I mean, I feel like anything could happen. I could fall over or set myself on fire, and I worry about all these silly things that never actually happen. I always think, “I wish I could just get up on stage and own it those people”.

Where do you think your music is best received? Festivals or venues?
I would never have thought we were a festival band, mainly because I don’t think people like feeling depressed at a festival.

So I always feel quite bad when we come on and we’re like “Right! Here’s 45 minutes of sadness for you all”, but it’s quite interesting because we’ve had some really amazing moments at festivals where we play some of our sadder songs, and we think it might go down really horribly because we’re on at 3pm or early afternoon and it’s blazing hot, and it’s just totally the wrong condition to play the song and we play it anyway – and there are times where it doesn’t mater because the audience are really amazing and we feel really connected to them.

Your album covers are normally photographs, but this one is a painting. Can you explain the idea behind that?
It’s an amazing painting by Sarah Shaw, and Igor came across it at an art fair and found her art there stunningly beautiful. That piece is called Spinning Around, and for me I was like “this looks like how the album sounds”. We’ve always left our artwork to after we’ve recorded, as it’s always important to us to find an image that sums up the final recorded album.

We weren’t even thinking about artwork at that point but Igor was like “it really looks like what we’re making, and what sound we’re making”. We all just fell in love with it, and it was so great to be able to use that image and Sarah was really great about it. It’s always great to find a new artist. We’ve had everything else photographic for the last ones, so it was really nice to be a bit different.

What’s the theme of this album? Has it drastically changed from the last one?
I think it has. We were thinking about what the last album meant compared to this one in terms of writing, and I think both are in depth studies on a specific theme. The first one was an in depth study about the ways in which your relationship can break down and I think that it went into the fine detail of that, and then this new album is all the different ways you can feel alone.

With the title of the album, we do this thing where we don’t think about the album title until the end as well. We leave everything to the end. We had a look through the lyrics and tried to find one phrase or one idea that summed up everything about the album and I think Not To Disappear was saying that no matter how lonely you are, you have to be confident. But yes, thematically it’s quite a lonely album.

Your song No Care is very upbeat and different to other Daughter songs. What influenced this?
I have no idea. No care is a weird song that springs out of the album. I don’t feel like we’re confined to just playing long ambient slow songs.

What’s your favourite song on the album?
I think they all mean a lot for different songs but Doing the Right Thing is definitely something I’m really glad I let come out of my head. I’m really glad how that song turned out. It’s a really delicate song but I love the weird middle section that has all the sludgy sounds in it.

by Katrina Mirpuri

Photograph: FJ Allen

Not to Disappear comes out on January 15. Pre-order it here

Daughter will be touring Europe in 2016:

January dates:
January, 15 – Corn Exchange, Cambridge, UK
January, 16 – Academy, Oxford, UK
January, 17 – Dome, Brighton, UK
January, 18 – Pyramids, Portsmouth, UK
January, 
20 – Institute, Birmingham, UK
January, 
21 – Albert Hall, Manchester, UK
January, 22 – Academy, Liverpool, UK
January, 
23 – Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, UK
January, 
25 – Academy, Newcastle, UK
January, 26 – Beckett University, Leeds, UK
January, 
27 – Rock City, Nottingham, UK
January, 28 – The Forum, London, UK
January, 
30 – Gaîté Lyrique, Paris, France
January, 31 – Kantine, Cologne, Germany

February dates:
February, 
1 – Paradiso, Amsterdam, Netherlands
February, 3 – Gruenspan, Hamburg, Germany
February, 4 – Vega, Copenhagen, Denmark
February, 5 – Debaser Medis, Stockholm, Sweden
February, 7 – Kesselhaus, Berlin, Germany
February, 8 – Technikum Munich, Germany
February, 9 – Kaufleuten, Zurich, Switzerland
February, 10 – AB, Brussels, Belgium