Album Review: Gracie Abrams, Daughter From Hell

Gracie Abrams has built a career as one of pop’s quintessential girl next door, an intimate voice that spills diaristic lyrics. Daughter from Hell is an intentional departure. With her third album, Abrams appears determined to shed that image in favour of something darker, positioning herself as a patron saint for troubled young women – even the first music video for Daughter From Hell finds the singer in a psychiatric hospital only Stanley Kubrick could construct.

The title itself promises such a loud declaratory album that the music doesn’t live up to. Much of Daughter From Hell unfolds through mellowed-out ballads that are remarkably similar, causing many of the tracks to blur into one another. As a result, the album often feels rooted in the COVID era of pop that has already begun to fade: one defined by hushed, breathy vocals and understated arrangements that has long outlived its “best by” date.

The lyrics are equally underwhelming, despite the hellish motifs of knives, car crashes, burning houses, drugs and deviant men. It often mistakes big emotions for emotional depth, reaching for grand declarations in an attempt to elevate familiar experiences. When she muses that she’d rather “get hit by a train” than break up with a lover, the issue is not in her hyperbolic severity – after all, pop music hinges on melodrama – but rather in her unconvincing delivery.

Still, Daughter From Hell is not without its highlights. The winning track ‘Minibar', co-written with Audrey Hobert, is a surefire chart contender that’s effervescent and bubbly. Another standout comes with ‘Imaginary Friend’ – a song Abrams co-wrote with her partner, Paul Mescal – that humorously twists the album’s spectral undercurrent. ‘Hit the Wall’ is a mesmeric freefall: Abrams's tender vocals and confessional pen converse beautifully with fluttering synths programmed by Bon Iver's Justin Vernon. But it seems the best moments come when Abrams is trying on styles rather than tailoring them into something distinctly her own.

In an interview with Vogue in June, Abrams said this album is “the sum of all my parts” and that it “feels like me in progress.” You can truly see the vision Abrams had for Daughter From Hell, but it lacked the fleshing out it deserved. After two assured pop records in Good Riddance and The Secret of Us, a stumble like Daughter From Hell is hardly career-defining. If Abrams can marry this newfound ambition with the emotional precision that made her earlier work so compelling, this will look less like a destination than a necessary detour.

6/10