Like many of us, Daughters frontman Alexis Marshall has been struggling with mental health issues amid the ongoing global pandemic, the resulting lockdown and the otherwise apocalyptic milieu of our times. He's been getting help — two weeks ago he emerged from a month-long stint in therapy — but his first-ever solo offering, "Nature in Three Movements," still bristles and rattles with anxious energy and Einstürzende Neubauten-esque cacophony, boiling over as the musician's inner turmoil comes to the fore. Though it's a stand-alone single, the cut offers a taste of Marshall's forthcoming debut album, which was recorded during the same sessions, with musical assistance from Jon Syverson (Daughters) and Evan Patterson (Jaye Jayle, Young Widows), and will be announced soon for an early 2021 release.
According to Marshall, the experience of making the solo material was "the painstaking process of creating and honoring, pretending to know and asking for aide, questioning and conquering, and the pale, unending anxiety nipping at the heel. This past life come current is at last the realized direction of many excruciating years beneath the wheel. The evaluation process has grown enjoyable, the evaluation process is, at last, its own reward and the hands involved have made me a better human being; without these hands, I would surely have crashed to burn. Thank you all.
"I cull the hammer. I wield the hammer. I eat, breathe, sleep, shit, fuck the hammer."
For more from Marshall, watch his recent appearance on Saint Vitus Bar's interview series "The Age of Quarantine":
