Thu, 30 Jan
|The Grand Social
Daughter of Swords
Intimate show with Daughter of Swords- Aiken Presents


Time & Location
30 Jan 2020, 19:00
The Grand Social, 35 Liffey Street Lower, Northside, Dublin 1, D01 C3N0, Ireland
About The Event
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.