Sometimes, an album is too long. As I would not eat a whole cake, I would be happy with seven Gracie Abrams songs instead of the 16 delivered on Daughter From Hell. In her new album, Abrams, 26 years old and born in Pacific Palisades, deals in simple melodies of considerable delicacy, all a little bit like her first big hit “I Miss You I’m Sorry”, released a month into the pandemic. There is a lot of breath-gentle reflection and closely-miked “ts”, a bit of waltz time, a tender presence of falling chords and much acoustic finger-picking – one of the things that makes her feel Nineties, like that melodic one-hit wonder Lisa Loeb.
Through this retro lens, songwriting is vulnerability without revenge, and music is a container – just about – for mental disturbance. It is something I also appreciate in Olivia Rodrigo, who was inspired to write the Nineties-tastic “Drivers Licence” when she heard Abrams’ early songs. Aaron Dessner from the National co-wrote the album (he has also produced Taylor Swift, Abrams’ big hero) and this feels like another gesture away from the multiple pop writers of the 21st-century LA song factory. It’s just that there are so many songs, and so much prettiness, it’s hard to know what to do. Even the homogeneity feels like a step back in time. As though the modern attention span can’t handle such a constant musical voice.
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