Daughter of Swords

Daughter of Swords

The Grand Social

30th January 2020

Tickets €12.50 available now from Ticketmaster

Aiken Promotions proudly presents Daughter of Swords, live at The Grand Social, 30th

January 2020. Tickets €12.50 available from Ticketmaster.

In 2017, Alexandra Sauser-Monnig began recording a set of songs about a breakup that

had yet to happen. Her partnership had drifted into a comfortable state of indecision,

stalling when it came time to make big life moves or chase new horizons. She had the

sense that she needed to slip the relationship in order to pursue everything else life might

have in store—more music, more adventures, a general sense of the unknown. Those

feelings drifted steadily into a set of songs that lamented the inevitable loss but, more

important, outlined the promise of the future. Recording the ten tracks that became her

stunning solo debut, Dawnbreaker, under the new name Daughter of Swords gave

Sauser-Monnig permission to go.

Dawnbreaker began as the first phase of Sauser-Monnig’s return to music after

stepping to the sidelines for the better part of a decade. Her college trio, Mountain Man,

rose to quick acclaim for their peerless harmonies around 2010, but the friends slowly

drifted apart, following their own interests to different coasts and concerns. While working

on a flower farm as a farmhand, though, Sauser-Monnig realized that she missed the

emotional articulation she found in writing songs and singing them and resolved to start

again. She pieced together an album just as Mountain Man—now newly gathered in the

fertile Piedmont of North Carolina—began to regroup for its second LP, 2018’s aptly

named Magic Ship. Working with Sylvan Esso’s Nick Sanborn, Sauser-Monnig shaped

what began as quiet reflections into confident compositions, crackling with country

swagger and a sparkling pop warmth. They were, after all, preemptive odes to the next

phase of life.

There’s no better testament than “Shining Woman,” where Sauser-Monnig portrays a

ropy woman navigating her “steel steed” up and down the bends and passes of

California’s fabled Highway 1. She openly marvels at that spirit and strength, wishing that

for her own life. With Dawnbreaker, she has found it in some measure—the joy of

something new, the excitement of risk. Though Sauser-Monnig nearly recorded these

songs as barebones folk ballads, she reimagined them with Sanborn and a top-tier crew

of North Carolina friends, like fellow Mountain Man singers Amelia Meath and Molly

Sarlé, bandleader Phil Cook, and guitarist Ryan Gustafson. These vivid settings

highlight the emotional contours of these songs, revealing the complexity that comes with

knowing that, in order to live, you sometimes have to let something as strong as love go.

That is the lesson of Dawnbreaker, an intimate document of what it means to set oneself

free.