In 2019, Alex Sauser-Monnig (who is best known as a longtime member of folk trio Mountain Man and spin-off project The A’s) released Dawnbreaker, their debut solo release under the moniker Daughter of Swords. The record, which combined gentle folk with luminous pop melodies and a country swagger, saw Sauser-Monnig “kick off the comfortable indecision of a settled life for the self-reliance of new horizons,” as we put it in our review, “plotting the hope and confusion and anguish of human relationships alongside the patient rhythms of nature and landscapes.” A quiet period (and The A’s) followed, but last autumn, Alex Sauser-Monnig returned with ‘Alone Together’, a new single that hinted at a change of direction for the project. It proved a significant departure from Sauser-Monnig’s usual folk stylings, a song we said previously “pulses with synths and blossoming electronics, driven forward on a stream of potent guitar and muscular percussion… exuding a buoyant confidence as we all trudge on through the barrage of bad news and complicated feelings.”
‘Alone Together’ is the opener on Alex, the sort-of-self-titled new Daughter of Swords record, out now via Psychic Hotline. The album sees this new stage of the project solidified and celebrated, Sauser-Monnig embracing a new kaleidoscopic approach to songwriting. “Since the release of her debut album, Daughter of Swords’ music has grown thornier,” as the label puts it. “An unpredictable and knotty tangle of technicolor synths, heady guitar, bubbling rhythms, a sheen enveloping songs about raw human intensity writ large—crushes, desire, anger, alienation, the horrors of late-stage capitalism the cascading paradigm shifts it seems we’re all hurtling toward.”
If that sounds messy, well, that’s because it is, but in the best way possible. Sauser-Monnig takes on the overwhelming, confusingly contradictive nature of contemporary life by mimicking it in music. If their career thus far has been defined by the restraint and minimalism of voice and (sometimes) guitar, Alex is something of its inverse, throwing everything into the pot and stirring gleefully. There’s danceable electronic pop and rumbling indie rock, easy melodies and tangles of synthetic textures. Take the bright, Dear Nora-esque ‘Hard On’, or the loose-limbed smear of ‘All I Want Is You’ that segues from catchy verses to a chorus that shakes itself free with a slo-mo crash and wallop. But the record has its reserved moments too. ‘Morning In Madison’ is all soft hues and dawn-time hush, while ‘Song’ wouldn’t be out of place on a Mountain Man record, just voice and gentle guitar and aching negative space.
In some ways Alex is the perfect spring record. There are quiet moments of green shoots and bursting buds, and others of sudden, somewhat shocking, metamorphosis. The brash pop moments must be how a butterfly feels after emerging from its chrysalis, suddenly brighter, bolder, realising it has these beautiful wings and deciding to flap them. The record was produced by Sylvan Esso’s Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn at their studio in Chapel Hill, and their fingerprints are evident. Left-field pop structures and inventive electronics create something equal parts catchy and deep. This is perhaps best evidenced by ‘Talk To You’, an invigorating indie pop song about the heart-quickening rush of physical desire. It’s built on an insistent handclap beat and decorated with a cacophony of samples that splash across the song like comic book sound effects.
But all this colour and playfulness supports something harder and sharper. These songs are built on a reckoning with some pretty serious subject matter. Sauser-Monnig explores their place in the world, including but not limited to the music biz, gender, desire (both in a sensual sense and a selfless one) and the perhaps vain hope for a better world. Ostensibly upbeat with its clanking clockwork rhythm, ‘Money Hits’ takes a swing at the rigged game that is capitalism and the infuriating wealth inequality that it causes. “’Money Hits’ is a song about financial striving,” Sauser-Monnig describes. “The fact that capitalism is a joke and everyone at the bottom is living its appalling punchline. Money is imaginary—a deadly and expensive roadblock at every turn for the poor, but so abundant as to almost become air for the affluent.” Harking back to Dawnbreaker, it also draws on natural imagery. “Floating, flying shimmering, diving / Like a bird on the wing,” they sing of the initial rush “when the money hits.” But these metaphors have a secondary effect too, drawing attention to the destructive effect of our extractive, exploitative society. “But nature will have the last laugh on all of us,” Sauser-Monnig continues. “[Money is] also so imaginary that as the consequences of our inability to get off fossil fuels passes tipping points, no one will be able to buy their way back to a liveable world.”
It is this collision of the personal and the political which marks Alex. The anti-capitalist sentiment feels more than just empty slogans parroted from a podcast, something borne of lived experience and a very real concern for our planet and all the people living on it. This political awareness means the introspective moments of self-reflection feel less like selfish solipsism and more a blueprint for liberation. A less-than-gentle nudge to defy convention and have the courage to live life as oneself in a world that feels increasingly allergic to outliers and eccentrics. It’s also a reminder that the weirdness that you (or I, or we) are feeling is not some fault or deficiency, but to be expected. As Sauser-Monnig sings on ‘Strange’:
I feel strange
But it’s just a natural reaction
To a world coming apart at the seams
Alex is out now via Psychic Hotline. Order your copy from the Daughter of Swords Bandcamp page.
