album: Deep Dream - Daddy Issues

Four tracks into the Daddy Issues album and we're welcomed onto "High Street". A fuzzy, blissful ballad that sees the band shrugging off plans to "write a song about you sucking/and look at your pictures/ Hang with your friend I planned on kissing" for a night of talking with friends, watching a movie, taking a bath and then slipping into a deep dream. The track that pays homage to the album's title perhaps best sums up what you're in for on a Daddy Issues record - deep, relatable, honesty; even opening about issues that are important, and hard.

Sure there's a totally fun cover of "Boys of Summer" and a biting wish for bad things to happen to an ex on "Dog Years," but there's also sincerity and heart. On "I'm Not," Emily Maxwell opens out about a childhood trauma sharing her story with the help of her bandmates sludgy instrumentals, and a defiant, steady drum. While on closer, "Dandelion," the band explores a heartache we've all experienced before, admitting, "you're so attractive/and I'm stupid/for falling for it/and picking you again." Their grungy garage rock is among some of the only in recent memory that approaches a sound so harsh with total tenderness. Even on opener, "Mosquito Bite," Daddy Issues wonder they spent so much time crying over someone who hurt them with the impact of a mosquito bite, fuzz echoing like a buzzing bug, the song itself swirling about you. Deep Dream is the musical equivalent of hanging with your best friends, and when you're feeling like the only one that could be going through this or you just need a friend to agree with you and say "fuck them," the trio is there to step in.