To exist in a Gracie Abrams song is to be wrapped up in a certain level of melodrama and yearning. Big, crushing feelings have become part of her calling card, delivered in a featherlight voice that reinforces the sense that, any second, the whole world could come crumbling down around her.
It’s unsurprising, then, that for the title of her third album, she goes to extremes again. ‘Daughter From Hell’ sounds like a record that will be marked by rebellion and angst – and lots of it – but you’ll have to dig deep for much of the former. Instead, this is Abrams’ reflection on her younger self, looking back from a far more mature, stable vantage point, only occasionally letting her slip back into the apparent carnage of her youth.
That doesn’t mean the emotions on this album are any smaller, and the singer-songwriter signposts them with enough violent imagery that she could be writing her own horror movie. “I’m a crack in the pavement / I’m a slipknot”, goes the very first line of album opener ‘Hit The Wall’. On ‘Death Wish’, she’s at the mercy of another, demanding to know when they’ll “twist the knife / With a smile while you kill me”. ‘The Knife’, pretty but unspectacular, finds her “living with a knife in my side […] They’re daring me to pull it out / I’ll probably keep it for a lifetime”. And that’s just the first three songs.
So far, so dramatic, but the problem is that those sentiments often fall flat; jump scares thrown in to zhuzh up a limp script. They fare better in the second half of the album, when Abrams adds a twist – turning the horror into something positive. ‘Imaginary Friend’, a softly strummed song she co-wrote with partner Paul Mescal, takes a spectral presence felt in the kitchen and brings some humour to the situation. ‘Afflictions’, meanwhile, puts us on a plane juddering through the sky: “You hold my hand through turbulence”, she whispers. “You sugarcoat the oxygen”.
As well as Mescal, there’s a plethora of big-name collaborators on ‘Daughter From Hell’. ‘Minibar’ is an obvious Audrey Hobert co-write; Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon shows up on ‘Hit The Wall’ and ‘Humming’; Marcus Mumford lends his voice to ‘What If It’s Right?’ Often, though, the album’s best songs come when it’s just Abrams and longtime producer Aaron Dessner working in tandem – previous single ‘Look At My Life’ takes us into a high school party full of pills and popular kids in a way that acknowledges the stupidity of it all but still feels like a rush, while ‘Sober’ is a gorgeous piece of work that gently builds into something devastating.
‘Daughter From Hell’ is meant to be a reflection, so it’s fitting that the title track serves as an apology to Abrams’ parents for terrorising them as a teenage tearaway. It’s a shame that it ends up feeling plodding and dirgey, the slow, distorted guitar making it feel more torturous than enlightened. Perhaps that in itself is a reflection – that, at 26, Abrams still, as we all do, has more growing to do.
