Sooner or later you have to grow up. No avoiding it. No other option. The only choice is how. Daisy Grenade have released an impressive number of singles since 2022. Fittingly their third EP is called ‘So Much To Say’ and, for them, it’s time to make that choice.
Dani Nigro and Keaton Whittaker are two creatives. They’re not tethered to a band structure. That means changing their sound is easier. Indeed, their press releases talk breathlessly of the producers they have worked with. This isn’t unusual, but you can’t really predict the results. Thankfully, the EP turns out to be a complete flex, designed to show off exactly what they can do.
Daisy Grenade’s sound is best described as teenage punk rock, like We Are The In Crowd, Yours Truly or Avril Lavigne’s mischievous era. The duo fill that same youthful alt-pop niche but this EP is the sound of them growing up. It can be divided into three acts which track that evolution; ACT I feels young and boisterous. ACT III feels older and more mature. Sandwiched between them, of course, is ACT II – an enormous nervous breakdown.
The first two songs making up ACT I are a mix of the same scrappy punk rock attitude and hook-filled choruses that defined their 2024 EP ‘Cult Classic’. Opener ‘A Beautiful Woman Is A Weapon, I Guess That’s Why They Call Her A Bombshell’ is built around a huge push and pull vocal, designed to catch you by both ears. It’s a rowdy and exciting slice of pop-punk that feels totally unchained. On ‘Emily’, this sound is pared back in favour of a sly piece of verbal assassination aimed at the titular character.
‘Girls Are So Lucky’ sits at the record’s centre. Produced and co-written by Grammy Award-winning producer Pom Pom, it’s completely different to all the other songs here and actively feels like a single. It features a repeating hook and a processed vocal at odds with the duo’s singing styles, similar to last year’s single ‘Don’t Sweat It’. Beginning with a looped, detuned guitar riff it, uses the phrase ‘so lucky’ as a soft hook only to collapse into a dubstep-style breakdown. It’s miles from the other songs, and yet it oozes the quality you’d expect from a Grammy Award-winning co-writer.
During ACT III they reach a more mature alt-rock sound, but with that same pleasingly barbed lyrical tone. The simple guitar part underpinning ‘Rent To Own’ is bathed in chorus, making it soft and quite lovely, and then expands into something bigger and bolder for its finale. Similarly, ‘It Must Be Me’ soars back for an epic, closing chorus, but sadly the singer’s voice isn’t powerful enough for it to work as intended, creating this frankly bizarre denouement where the vocal sits at odds with the music. It’s a slightly odd ending, but again shows that maturity.
Daisy Grenade truly have ‘So Much To Say’ on their new EP. It neatly mirrors growing up; boisterous, keen to experiment and a little bit messy.
IAN KENWORTHY