“I’m living with a knife in my side/I’m gonna take it for a joy ride,” Gracie Abrams sings three songs into her new album. This isn’t the first time the word “knife” appears on Daughter from Hell, nor is it the last. She’ll reference knives four different times across the album, and that’s not even including the stunning piano ballad “The Knife.” For Abrams, these blades are a tool to describe her pain — the way they twist, cut to the bone, and even linger a while. And on Daughter From Hell, you’d almost think she likes it. “They’re daring me to pull it out,” she sings. “I’ll probably keep it for a lifetime.”
Expectations are high for Daughter From Hell, out this Friday via Interscope. And that’s not just because it’s Abrams’ third album, a famously challenging make-or-break moment in every artist’s career. Abrams, the daughter of filmmaker J.J. Abrams and Hollywood producer Katie McGrath, released her debut, Good Riddance, in 2023 — the same year she opened for Taylor Swift on the Eras Tour and received a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist. A year later, she released her second album, The Secret of Us, and the deluxe edition featured her first Top 10 hit: the highly addictive joyride “That’s So True” (we’re still waiting to hear the “very vulgar” version of it). Abrams has been dismissed as a “nepo baby,” a tag she has talked about with grace and self-awareness. She’s also been the source of dumb memes, a perpetual sad girl who, so says the internet, has no right to be — especially when you have rock-hard abs and you’re dating a famous actor (who also has rock-hard abs).
But as Abrams admits on the thrilling single “Look at My Life,” she got what she wanted, and it doesn’t sit right. In fact, it can be kind of a bad time. On Daughter From Hell, there are ghosts, imaginary friends, engines fading, and possible train collisions — but it’s her best album yet, 16 tracks that sparkle with angst, beauty, and all the baggage that comes with adulthood. Abrams might be as old as Napster and The Sopranos (she was born in 1999), but she writes with the kind of well-worn wisdom songwriters spend their whole careers trying to achieve. “There’s no one at the top to believe,” she sings on the delicate “Humming,” co-written with her longtime collaborator Aaron Dessner and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. “What a way to feel in your twenties.”
Abrams’ first two albums were delightfully introspective, her whispery bedroom vocals delivering her greatest secrets straight into your headphones over gentle instrumentation. At times, though, her songs ran the risk of sounding too similar, bleeding into each other both sonically and lyrically. She obliterates that notion in Daughter From Hell, which she co-produced with Dessner, digging deep and experimenting more than ever before. The title track is a raw, devastating rocker, unlike anything else in her catalog, that’s easily one of the greatest songs of her career. She simultaneously thanks her mother and apologizes to her for being a troubled teen, singing over fuzzed-out guitar: “I was a pill, you swallowed me down/They say that I got your mouth.”
Abrams has taken enormous leaps with her vocals here, too. Listen to the way she soars across feathery octaves on “Good Reason,” or the way she goes full Adele on the chorus of “Men Like You”: “Girl, I know men like youuuuuuu, youuuuuuu!” The cheeky “Mini Bar,” co-written with her best friend, pop singer Audrey Hobert, features the same conversational style as “That’s So True.” Only there are no dumb faces here — instead, we get hilariously relatable lines about going out (“I’m at the corner minimart/Got 50 bucks and a brain cell”) and social anxiety (“I’m at the party/Is it just me, or do you feel insane?”). It’s this kind of charming humor and vulnerability that’s gained her all those devoted fans, who show up to her concerts wearing bows and white skirts, yelling the lines to every song.
“Imaginary Friend,” the track directly following that one, stands in stark contrast to the festivities of “Mini Bar” — a comedown of sorts, a stripped-down acoustic gem for the quiet morning after. Abrams co-wrote it with another collaborator on Daughter From Hell: Paul Mescal, the famous actor in question. “Don’t be a figment of my imagination,” Abrams insists. “But you are, and I fucking hate it.” It might be difficult to write good music when you’re in a happy relationship, but Abrams doesn’t seem to have this problem — she’s more creative than ever. “You tell the truth about everything,” she sings on “Afflictions,” which features a subtle string arrangement. “Of all your afflictions/That is my favorite one.”
Right from the opening of Daughter From Hell, on the synth-happy “Hit the Wall,” Abrams tries to navigate why she “lives in a pattern of breakdowns.” She cleverly sneaks Joni Mitchell, her North Star, into a line: “‘A Case of You’ playing in the hallway/Hallucinations that I downplay.” It sets the tone for the rest of Daughter From Hell, because just like the Canadian legend, Abrams knows her best weapon is her songwriting — no knives needed.
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