Signing you in

Save this storySave StorySave this storyIn a Popcast interview about her third album, Daughter From Hell, Gracie Abrams talked about how she’d changed her songwriting style. A few years older and more conscientious of the feelings of the people she wrote about, she described the new record as “a little bit less diaristic, and mildly more existential.” Existential is right, but “mildly” is putting it, well, mildly: By the end of the album, you will hear many different attempts to explain how it feels to be Gracie Abrams, or at least to be around Gracie Abrams. There are physical descriptions: She is sick, she is numb, she is aching, she is bleeding, she is burning up, she is carrying pain for her whole life. There are metaphors: She is a crack in the pavement, a drop in your ocean, a knife cut to the bone. There’s even a supernatural angle: The perennially haunted Abrams experiences auditory hallucinations, sees shadows and apparitions, and is distracted at best and tortured at worst by the constant presence of loved ones who are no longer there.

This kind of psychic intensity has served Abrams well. Since the 2020 release of her debut EP, minor, she’s been excavating emotions to understated music; 2024’s The Secret of Us debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, and its chatty bonus track, “That’s So True,” was a top 10 hit. Now with Daughter From Hell, Abrams once again combines bulletproof pop songwriting with a melancholic indie-folk aesthetic. Aaron Dessner, with whom Abrams has collaborated since her 2021 EP This Is What It Feels Like, is once again a co-writer and producer; his trademark acoustic guitar, soft percussion, and tender strings are all back on the menu. That guitar is more often fingerpicked than strummed, and piano features prominently on songs like “Mews,” a smoky ballad about not noticing the downturn of a relationship until it’s too late, and “The Knife,” where Abrams hits high notes so breathy they’re translucent.

The production feels more grounded and more nuanced than that of The Secret of Us, whose rootsy foundation sometimes had a plastic sheen. Compare this album’s “Good Reason,” an airy song in 3/4 time in which Abrams lets an unsatisfactory romance lapse, to the previous album’s “I Love You, I’m Sorry,” another airy song in 3/4 time in which Abrams lets an unsatisfactory romance lapse: “Good Reason” is softer and warmer, hazy but still distinct, and most importantly, it ditches the verbose bridge in favor of a pared down post-chorus, giving her emotions some much-needed breathing room. “If only you got disappointed/If only I kept every promise/If only you treated me poorly/If only you didn’t adore me,” Abrams sings with blank resignation, no tears left to cry.

Abrams-Dessner compositions hit all the familiar beats: cozy arrangements that crescendo and diminish, whispered verses and yearning head-voice choruses, kick drums that sound like they were recorded in a basement two houses over, mildly quirky synths that, like good house guests, never overstay their welcome. Any diversion from that mode is a nice change, like the first couple of singles. “Look at My Life” in particular really pops—it’s a play-by-play of experiencing “a new spiral every night” that has its share of therapy-pop clichés (“Do I look high functioning or/Is my facade crumbling?”) but is such a banger that the psychology talk doesn’t feel cloying. At its best, Abrams’ writing taps into a satisfying cadence where the syllables follow an irresistible internal logic and hit just right. Take a verse like “What a gut punch, but then we go/Downtown, there’s no medicine/I’d spit out if it promises/Slowing down voices/Don’t want to hear a sound.” What looks inscrutable on paper makes total sense when you hear Abrams lay it out in her syncopated flow state. “Look at My Life” is new territory for her: a song about not having a good time, that is itself a good time.

Album opener “Hit the Wall” is also a peppier-than-normal song about feeling like shit. Abrams’ delicate voice is front and center, twisting her relentless self-analysis into little knots: “Felt good for a day but that stopped/And I once saw it clearly but it’s bloodshot/And I want you so badly but I close off.” By the time all the tension melts into a soaring bridge, you almost wish it’d take off into a Mumford & Sons hoedown (Marcus Mumford does come through later for the mellow duet “What If It’s Right?”), but restraint wins over exuberance, and the song shrinks back into its shell. In his work with pop artists, Dessner’s understated instrumentation clears the stage so that wordy songwriting like Abrams’ can stand out. But after a while, all that tastefulness stands in the way of music that could be more memorable, and it puts lyrics that might be lacking on full display.

A lot of Daughter From Hell feels both incredibly intense and frustratingly vague. Abrams fills her songs with unjust deeds and nefarious characters, but the resulting feelings are always more distinct than whatever happened to cause them. “Men Like You,” for example, sketches an outline of an exploitative relationship—“If all you ever wanted was a golden ticket/You could’ve just said it/It would have saved me time”—but some of the verbiage feels muddled. “How dare you make me choose/Between myself and shallow?” she asks over pulsating strings—it’s hard to parse what kind of choice is being made here. Likewise, the refrain “Girl, I know men like you” has an intriguing ring to it. Assuming she’s singing to a woman in power who has been acting like a patriarchal asshole, this observation could make for a great song, but the lyrics are just ambiguous enough to blur out any deeper meaning. And “Imaginary Friend,” a song Abrams wrote with her actor boyfriend Paul Mescal, has the same issue of being evocative without ever cohering. Over campfire strums, she describes feeling the ghostly presence of…an old boyfriend? A situationship? A friend that could have been something more? Unclear. But they’re “a figment of my imagination/And I fucking hate it”—which gets a bit confusing when she says that it’s getting hot and wonders if she and the figment of her imagination should take their clothes off. Can ghosts get undressed? Should they?

Gracie Abrams: Daughter From Hell$50 at Rough TradeMost Read Reviewsnew avatarKelelaStanding on the Corner IIStanding on the CornerA Stranger to YouLoatheReader ReviewsBack to topTriangleAlbum scoring guidelines.0.0

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