Hermione Hoby 

Daughter: If You Leave – review

Bruised folk tunes from the London trio should be heartbreaking but verge on the grating, writes Hermione Hoby
  
  

London trio, Daughter
London trio Daughter: guitarist Igor Haefeli, singer Elena Tonra, and drummer Remi Aguilella Photograph: Richard Saker for the Observer Photograph: Richard Saker/Observer

Daughter, a London trio fronted by Elena Tonra, make bruised folk music that recalls Laura Marling and a host of singer-songwriters for whom fragility is synonymous with beauty. Set against layered washes of sound, Tonra's voice is breathy and sweet and unremarkable, breaking sometimes into a wrenched whisper, that should be heartbreaking but, more often than not, is just a bit grating. On Smother, a tear-stained teenage diary, vibes reach a nadir when she sings: "I sometimes wish I'd stayed inside my mother/ Never to come out" – followed by a chorus of ethereal "oohs" that doesn't help the sense of suffocation.

 

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