Mattock - Daughters

​Mattock

Daughters
self-released; 2026

By Matt Jensen
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Mattock sound like a band assembled from years of accumulated club smoke, basement rehearsals, and regional scenes that no longer carry the same cultural gravity they once did. You can hear traces of early 2000s indie rock, punk, Americana, and strange art-rock detours throughout Daughters, but the record never comes across like an exercise in revivalism. Casey Brandt’s history playing places like CBGB and The Continental with Satirius Johnson collides naturally with Jason Fletcher’s roots in the DMV underground, and the result is an album that values physical performance over precision editing. The songs breathe, speed up slightly when they need to, and occasionally feel on the verge of unraveling in ways that actually improve the material.

“Holy Boat” opens the album with a tight groove and a mix that immediately caught my attention. The drums cut cleanly through the center while the bass and vocals remain sharply defined without sounding overly polished. Mattock do not reinvent the fundamentals of rock songwriting here, but the band understand how to lock into momentum and let a groove carry the weight. “Daughter” pushes into stranger territory. The vocalist occasionally reminded me of Les Claypool, and the track carries flashes of Primus and even Swans, though without leaning into technical excess. There is a loose muscularity to the performance that works in its favor.

“Actaeon” moves faster and cuts harder, driven by strong guitar work and restless forward motion, while “Daedalus” leans into a bluesier rock structure that eventually opens into one of the album’s strongest descending passages. “Lil’ Busted Fox” carries a loose jam-band energy that mostly lands because the band never overplay their hand. “Invitation” keeps the record grounded before “Reptilian” suddenly accelerates into punk tempos with flashes of prog-rock melody tucked inside the chaos. “Ghosts of the Confederacy” has some strong moments as well, but “Boring Life” is the track that stayed with me most. The closer settles into a series of grooves and melodic turns that underline the album’s central strength: these songs sound played rather than assembled.
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The record reminded me at times of older Modest Mouse or Built to Spill albums because of how committed it is to capturing the feeling of musicians occupying the same physical space. You can hear room tone, human timing, and the friction between instruments pushing against each other. In an era where so much rock music is flattened into software perfection, Daughters benefits from still sounding like actual people in a room chasing a feeling together.

mattockband.com

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