Interview with Alexis Marshall (Daughters)

cuz i know how everyone likes the music part but hates the vocals with metal (rick) here is a good alternative with reasoning.

plus the album needs two thumbs up when you look back a year or so ago with the endless amounts of girl pants wearing "grind" acts. i know chunky and lee remember.

Daughters

Story by Andrew Parks

What we had here was a failure to communicate—presenting the rebirth of Daughters
You’ll have to excuse Alexis Marshall—he’s been drinking most of the afternoon and he isn’t about to censor himself. Decibel’s down for an actual honest interview, of course. And hell, we’ve been in Marshall’s position before, halfway between a six-pack and slitting our ears from cheek to cheek after one too many grindcore albums where more effort was put into naming the songs than actually writing them.

“We’re pretty sure people are upset we didn’t write another 12-song, 10-minute album with a bunch of blast beats and stupid song titles,” says Marshall, reacting to the predictable backlash to Hell Songs [Hydra Head] that’s already flooding the Jon Spencer Spazz Explosion’s MySpace page. “I hate going onstage, playing a song for 25 or 30 seconds, stopping, and then doing another one. It’s the same fucking song. You can’t tell the difference, you know?”

Amen. We’d be lying if we said we dug the mangled, best-appreciated-live mess that was Daughters’ last LP, Canada Songs [Robotic Empire]. As creepy and kooky as the riffs were, Marshall might as well have been screaming “Rarr, rarr/blargh, blargh” in the background. And though “I Don’t Give a Shit About Wood, I’m Not a Chemist” was a decent track title, a confession is in order… “I didn’t sing any words to 90 percent of Canada Songs, which is so lame,” explains Marshall. “I don’t even remember what the hell I wrote on that record anymore. It was such an easy way out, you know? Screaming is obnoxious. I’m tired of it.”

The surprise on Hell Songs isn’t a 180 degree switch to squeegee-ed singing; it’s much more bizarre—a bluesy, snaky and snarky droll that fits the halfway-house sex vibe of Daughters shows. Marshall actually begins the record by listing the misconceptions that have been cast in his direction, among them sinner, wrongdoer, evildoer, miscreant, the devil incarnated, and our personal favorite, “a good for nothing, ass-fucking son of a bitch.” All the while, the band retains a familiar Daughters backdrop of guillotine guitars and gut-smacking drums, with the exception of the compact noise experiment “Providence by Gaslight,” which climaxes in a cloudburst of violins, trumpet and upright basslines provided by members of Kayo Dot.

“There’s no way to half-ass listen to this record,” says Marshall. “When it’s heavy, it’s heavy, and when it’s weird it’s annoying as hell. Basically, I want to weed out all of the fuckheads who were here just to socialize and be seen. I could come out and say I love everyone, but that’s bullshit. I despise phonies—they’re all made of papier mâché and I hope they fucking die.”