A Track-By-Track Breakdown of Daughter of Swords' 'Alex'

Daughter of Swords’ Alex Sauser-Monnig Breaks Down Every Song on New Album Alex

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Last Friday, Alex Sauser-Monnig released ‘Alex,’ her second album as Daughter of Swords. In his review of the record, Paste contributor Andy Crump wrote: “From track to track, verse to verse, no two songs here sound alike in tone or texture. For an artist with roots in Americana and folk music’s traditions, Alex reads as distinctly modern, except on songs where it instead reads as retro, or on the ones where each of these flavors of past and present collide.”

Alex marks Sauser-Monnig’s first solo full-length in six years and, since then, she’s turned Daughter of Swords into a transitional vessel interwoven with synthesizers, buoyant percussion, and her vocals, which curl into a yelp but, ultimately, simmer in a crushing hum. On “Alone Together,” the guitars are bright and the songwriting is ace, as Sauser-Monnig revels in their current, mid-heartaching truth: “I don’t really want to see anybody, except my friends and my dog and my paycheck money.” The label “singer-songwriter” just doesn’t do Daughter of Swords justice. “Alone Together” is rock-tinged pop confetti entangled in a broken relationship and a “belief in love” that’s “worn pretty thin.” Alex is a mirror held up to the fullness of vulnerability.

We asked Sauser-Monnig to walk us through every track on the record, and she was kind enough to oblige. Tune in, scroll through, and enjoy.

“Alone Together”

I wrote the new record with an acoustic guitar as a tool, but at the outset of recording each song, we asked ourselves what energy each song was actually giving, and what could do the work instead of acoustic. Alone Together was the first track we recorded and it confirmed that approach and energetically pointed the way for the rest of the record.

“Talk to You”

Amelia Meath co-produced the record and she had the great idea of translating a guitar part from the demo into a series of sound effects that are all metaphors for sex. Everything else kind of emerged from there.

“Hard On”

Language is such a powerful tool for ameliorating gender dysphoria. Energetically, the dick is large. We really leaned into Robert Palmer and Huey Lewis’ record Sports as points of reference. Also, pinball machines.

“Morning in Madison”

I had a crush on this person for several years before dating them. I knew they would be bad for me, but it was too cool to not. A Charlie Brown Christmas was very in the mix, sonically speaking.

“Money Hits”

Like so many other people, I’ve worked multiple jobs to pay the bills. “Money Hits” is a reflection on class war—about how money is imaginary and if you have it, it’s almost as invisible as air, and if you don’t it’s like a brick wall. Like capitalism is a joke and the punchline is climate catastrophe and homelessness.

“All I Want is You”

It was so fun to capture the breathless energy of a crush in a live take with Caleb Wright on drums, Nick Sanborn on bass, and me in the vocal booth and everyone absolutely raging.

“Willow”

I had a dream that Nick was an Ent, and he was standing on the top of a grassy hill in the sunshine and his arms were waving in the wind like branches, and it was the most peaceful, lovely thing I may ever have seen.

“Dance”

A couple of years ago, I realized that my type not only made me lonely, but was also like a prophylactic against my own better life impulses. It was also summer, which I find to be the most depressing time of year. Trash smells bad and the expectations are high.

“Strange”

Modern life is so alienating. Here we are, driving ourselves over the brink into the great unknown on every possible level, and we’re still supposed to go to work.

“Vacation”

The White Lotus season one did such a good job. I wrote “Vacation” after binge-watching it, and was just thinking a lot about the inherently corrupting nature of wealth. About how easily irony or morality or whatever dissipates with participation in extreme wealth’s luxury and wonder.

“Song”

My father has dementia and he is gradually being distilled into the most beautiful, sweetest, and jolliest essence of himself. It’s a disease that is stigmatized and pushed into corners, but sharing life with my dad in this phase has been such a profound experience with so much more lightness and fun than people assume when you bring it up.

“West of West”

My band Mountain Man was on tour in California in 2018 and saw the Paradise fire start on the horizon as we were driving down the highway. I wrote West of West after that—reflecting on manifest destiny and Western expansionism coming up against climate change, and the fact that there is nowhere left to escape to. The glimmering imagining of waves crashing and breezes wafting through the trees of an unknown and unreachable shore.

Daughter of Swords’ new album Alex is out now via Psychic Hotline.

Daughter of Swords’ Alex Sauser-Monnig Breaks Down Every Song on New Album Alex