Gracie Abrams: Daughter From Hell Review – Cold Chants Hits Like a Piece of Powdered Sugar | Gracie Abrams

gRacie Abrams’ third album is a complete crime scene. Across 16 songs, the American songwriter has cataloged slip knots, blades, bullets, knives, more knives, ghosts, cages, drugs, car crashes, gore, burials, burning tires, suffocation, burning houses, shipwrecks, drowning, more blood, bloody knees and more knives. It’s called “Daughter from Hell” to acknowledge how frayed the 26-year-old’s parents were when she was a reckless teenager, and it’s part of a broader theme about knowing when to blame others for her pain, and when to accept responsibility. There’s obviously a lot of poetic license involved in depicting these mature revelations, but the dissonance between Abrams’ gothic emotional turmoil and the music’s insistent, trembling beauty is the real unresolved state of affairs on this bloodless recording.

In a way, Abrams has had a huge impact on pop music. Her early bedroom songs inspired Olivia Rodrigo to write Driver’s License, unleashing the former Disney star’s rapid and relentless work of self-redefinition. Mostly, though, Abrams is the sum of her influences: You don’t need to listen hard for the harmonies of Lorde’s voice, the intimacy of Phoebe Bridgers or the tightly packed narration of Taylor Swift, who had Abrams supported on the Eras tour. In Swift, she also shares a producer in the National’s Aaron Dessner, a Bon Iver collaborator (his falsetto appears on a couple of songs here, playing throughout the record), and certainly a voice in the pearly sonics of Folklore, injected with a whisper of clapping power. This combination of melodrama and songs sung like secrets means that Abrams’s audience skews young: her music carries a sense of being the only person in the world wrestling with huge emotions, as life often feels in adolescence. To anyone older, her music could seem like a small starter package.

What does Abrams have of its own? In the selected column, there is an instance of an independent girl’s voice so tremulous that it often sounds as if she is singing while standing on a vibrating plate that is in tune with her body. As a writer, although her songs often contain big choruses, her lyrics do not conform to traditional pop’s repetitive structures; She prefers to tell a story over the course of a few minutes, exacerbating her self-conscious neurosis until it’s time to flee, fight, or kiss. It’s a good observation of how people hurt themselves and each other: Good Reason digs into the secret of why nice guys who bleed for you are so unattractive; On Look At My Life, she sings, “I’ve been thinking about the hard stuff/On soft drugs like every night,” distilling the casual nihilism of a generation that never saw any reason to believe the good would go away. His rapid pulse eventually turns into an ornate crescendo, almost reckless.

Daughter from Hell upgrades its 2024 The Secret of Us mix for a more perforated format. The rare moments you get to walk through the heavy decor are the best. The chorus of “Broke My Heart” has an overwhelming sense of discontent. The race for guys like you gets even more intense when Abrams trades her usual silence on the microphone for a recriminatory swipe at someone who used her. At moments, the scale seems overlaid to make the songs work in arenas now headlined by the once-shy bedroom musician: The Knife ensures toned-down vocals on the phone, but for good reason it’s just Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You” coated in sweet mirrorball sheen. Set only to a rolling, distorted guitar, the title track apologizes to Abrams’ mother and is clearly intended to be great, but the greatness starkly highlights the universality of the record’s centerpiece: Abrams’ tribute plays like standard wedding vows, and throughout the album, we’re never really taught how she raised hell.

Of the smaller songs, “Death Wish” is the most effective, its catchy sweetness sharply underscoring lyrics that sound like they’re about an inappropriate age-gap relationship. Otherwise the saccharine sound is as choking as a lump of powdered sugar. Drops drips like rain in a puddle as Abrams whispers about her generation’s short straw: This sentiment is entirely justified, especially from the rare young pop star who speaks out about politics, but it’s unavoidably bloated. Gentle country music juxtaposes the tight vocal harmonies of “What If It’s True?” It quickly came to a head when Abrams and guest Marcus Mumford beat the title to death. Since they’re worried about whether the breakup makes sense, you may feel like screaming They just broke up already. Emphasis on words 1-2-3, 1-2-3 In the stables he’s reeling like seasickness.

The most notable absence from Daughter from Hell is that of Abrams’ best friend Audrey Huppert, who co-wrote six songs on The Secret of Us. Hubert has since emerged as a pop star thanks to her unique catchphrases and offbeat storytelling. Presumably, the separation was intended to preserve the sanctity of their voices while they pursued a parallel career. Hubert has only one co-writing credit here, on a fan-favorite show called Minibar that they teased live last summer. It’s a less distinctive version of Hobert’s Bowling Alley – the scene changes unexplained when the introvert feels conflicted about socializing – and Daughter from Hell’s second song suggests feeling awkward at a party (Look at My Life), but still, the sudden injection of enthusiasm from a stronger, instantly recognizable voice is unmistakable. You can see why Abrams leaves her crime scene a mess: Three albums later, she’s still struggling to get picked from the Police lineup.