Daughters / YMMV - TV Tropes

Awesome Music: Just about all of it, but especially their Self-Titled Album and You Won't Get What You Want.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The unnervingly quiet outro to "I Slept with Daughters and All I Got Was This Lousy Song Written About Me", which comes right the hell out of nowhere.
Epic Riff: "The Hit", "The Theater Goer", "The Unattractive Portable Head", "The Reason They Hate Me", and "Ocean Song" all provide excellent examples.
Even Better Sequel: General consensus is that each album is better than the one before it.
Friendly Fandoms:
- With Swans, due to the strong similarities between their respective styles. The fact that they've both gotten 10s from Anthony Fantano just seals the deal.
- There is an overlap with Slint, due to their similar lyrical themes and Darker and Edgier takes on the math rock genre. In particular, fans like to draw comparisons between "The Virgin" and "Don, Aman", as well as "Guest House" with "Good Morning, Captain".
Funny Moments: This live video from 2006 (Warning: NSFW), wherein a visibly drunk Lex is about to play the last song, has a non-conversation with an audience member and abruptly leaves when he's told the cops were arresting him for indecent exposure.
- There's just something hilarious about the band's first ever recorded song being called "Hello Assholes". Other funny titles include "Room Full of Hard-ons and Nowhere to Sit Down", "My Stereo Has Mono and So Does My Girlfriend", "I Don't Give a Shit About Wood, I'm Not a Chemist", "Pants, Meet Shit", "Crotch Buffet", and "The Fuck Whisperer".
Growing the Beard: Hell Songs is where they really established themselves as a unique musical entity. They've grown the beard more with every subsequent album.
Harsher in Hindsight: "The Virgin" comes across as an uncannily prescient prediction of the "incel" phenomenon that would become common among certain sections of young men on the internet in the mid-2010's, even ending with the implication that the protagonist's Self-Inflicted Hell drives them to commit a mass shooting; uncomfortably similar to incidents like the Isla Vista shootings or the Toronto van attack.
- Most of their songs, especially those on You Won't Get What You Want have became this thanks to his ex-girlfriend Kristin Hayter's (known as Lingua Ignota at the time) document on Lex's abusive relationship with her.
Memetic Mutation: "LET ME IN!"^Explanation
Narm Charm: Lex's vocals on Hell Songs, which have frequently been compared to a drunk cowboy, or Elvis Presley being tortured. While his singing should by all rights be ridiculous and hilarious, it fits the music so well that it makes the album even more disconcerting and abrasive than it would be with regular Harsh Vocals. .
Nightmare Fuel: You Won't Get What You Want, in spades is full of this. From the heavily abrasive sound to the lyrical themes that can be summed up as a slow, degrading Sanity Slippage that goes into what seems like a Stable Time Loop with "Guest House" featuring the protagonist screaming "LET ME IN!!" and pounding on a door, implying to be the same pounding beat from "City Song".
- Few albums are as accurately titled as Hell Songs. The whole thing is so dissonant and abrasive it's almost uncomfortable to listen to. Special mention goes to the unnervingly quiet last two minutes of "Cheers Pricks" and Lex's heavy breathing in the background of "The Fuck Whisperer".
Signature Song: "Satan in the Wait" for being their first new single in 8 years.
- "Guest House" as well, for those who love quoting the Memetic Mutation line "LET ME IN".
Spiritual Adaptation: "Guest House" and to a lesser extent "Ocean Song" are tonally and thematically very similar to House of Leaves, almost to the point where they could be filk songs.
Tear Jerker:
- "Guest House" is mostly Nightmare Fuel, but the last minute of the song is so utterly despairing that it also counts as this.
- "Cheers Pricks" is a song from the perspective of a self-loathing drug addict who is so far gone into near catatonia that all he can do is beg for a Mercy Kill from anyone who will listen.
The Woobie: It's really hard to not feel sorry for Paul in "Ocean Song". Even moreso if you consider him to be the same character in "The Virgin", "The Flammable Man", "City Song", and "Guest House".

YMMV / Daughters

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