Gracie Abrams – Daughter from Hell Album Review: Great Songs Buried Beneath a Sleepy Album
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Gracie Abrams is back with her second full-length LP, Daughter from Hell, and she is officially stepping away from the standard “teenage heartbreak” era that defined her 2024 sound. With this new record, she pivots toward a maturity-focused era of “adult self-scrutiny.” While The Secret of Us undoubtedly contained some great individual songs, its main flaw was that it failed to deliver a cohesive, perfect album experience.
Because I genuinely love Gracie’s incredible storytelling skills, I was deeply craving a personal and seamless project from her this time around.
During the promotional rollout, it became clear that this album would introduce major shifts compared to her past work. The concept promised “existential and self-interrogating” lyricism backed by a much broader sonic palette consisting of indie-pop, folk, and lush orchestral elements. I was literally amazed by that concept, because it is always refreshing to get a structurally perfect, narrative-driven album from our generation’s artists.
Let’s make it completely clear: after listening to this project, it honestly feels like a boring version of the latest Olivia Rodrigo record. Once again, Gracie has fed us a handful of great individual tracks, only to back them up with goofy songs that will put you to sleep faster than you think.
To be honest, this was one of my absolute worst album experiences of the year. I literally fell asleep by the time the record hit its halfway point. It serves as another frustrating example that this generation’s mainstream artists are completely unwilling to give us a cohesive album experience anymore. Instead, they are just obsessed with chasing quick virality via individual singles.
Production-wise, the album represents a high-stakes gamble for Abrams and her longtime sound architect, Aaron Dessner. While their partnership previously thrived on a signature indie-pop-leaning core, this project reaches for a “great ambition” that frequently collapses into a cluttered mess. The inclusion of electronic textures—meant to feel futuristic and avant-garde—often reads as an unsuccessful graft.
Specifically, the heavy bass synth textures in tracks like “Men Like You” and “Sober” act as intrusive sonic debris, clogging the “pearlescent acoustics” that typically define Abrams’ best work. The recording odyssey across Electric Lady in New York, Long Pond in the Hudson Valley, and various London studios brought in heavyweights like Dan Nigro and Justin Vernon. While the pedigree is unquestionable, the result is a conflict of interests rather than a synthesis of styles.
The “filigreed orchestration” often competes with sharp, unnecessary electronic layering, compromising the record’s overall sonic clarity. It is a project that aims for the heavens but remains grounded by its own over-production, suggesting that even with Dessner and Vernon at the helm, more is not always better.
Lyrically, Abrams is at a crossroads. There is genuine growth in her shift toward adult self-scrutiny; she is no longer merely relitigating old wounds but is instead attempting the difficult work of self-sculpture. However, the songwriting here feels like I have heard it from Olivia Rodrigo; this is no longer a cohesive or new story anymore.
Yet, some tracks have good writing here, like “Hit the Wall,” and “The Knife,” but despite them, the storytelling often feels redundant—a retread of the quivering heartbreak narratives Rodrigo has already explored with sharper precision. This sense of derivation is exacerbated by what The Guardian dismissed as “bloodless prettiness.” When the production is this meticulously manicured, the intended emotional weight of the “hard-edged symbols”—the knives, blood, cages, and ghosts that populate the record—can feel generic, hitting the listener like a faceful of icing sugar rather than a visceral blow.
Abrams is most compelling when she leans into the “existential” aims of the project, truly interrogating her own part in the wreckage of her relationships. When she achieves this, she becomes “legible” in a way that transcends pop tropes. Yet, too often, the record retreats into established blueprints, leaving the listener to wonder if the theatrical gothic tone is an evolution or merely a costume.
Taking a look at the tracklist, the album opens with “Hit the Wall,” the lead single released earlier this year. Honestly, when it first dropped, I liked it well enough, though I later criticized it for not sounding as slappy as her previous big hits. But listening to it in context, I’m loving it once again. The writing is incredibly sharp and the production is cool.
While it doesn’t quite reach the heights of a track like “That’s So True,” it easily remains the best overall song on this album.
The next three tracks, “Death Wish,” “The Knife,” and the title track “Daughter from Hell” are lyrically perfect, but they simply don’t sound slappy or carry the same sonic momentum compared to the opener. Fortunately, the fifth track, “Look at My Life,” gives a massive glimpse of that classic “That’s So True” songwriting style. It’s a great track indeed, and absolutely one of my favorites right behind the lead single.
The following track, “Good Reason,” keeps things moving and is pretty good, even if it isn’t completely perfect.
However, the structural crumble of this album starts immediately with the seventh track, “Men Like You,” and it becomes an absolute mess from here on out. Tracks 7 to 10 represent the weakest part of the entire project. They are incredibly boring pop ballads that will put you straight to sleep, even if you are an insomniac. Frankly, this specific run of tracks features some of the worst pop songs I’ve heard all year so far.
The 11th track, “minibar,” briefly woke me up from that deep boredom with some classic, high-quality Gracie Abrams vibes. I definitely liked it, but it just wasn’t enough to save the project because the album had already turned into a massive mess. Right after that, the next track, “Imaginary Friends,” basically told me to go back to sleep because the album wasn’t going to sound slappy again—and that is exactly what happened.
Even though “Humming” was pretty good on its own, the remaining tracks—“Afflictions,” “What if It’s Right,” and “Cold Goodbyes”—just fell right back into those same boring, sleepy vibes that ruined tracks 7 through 10.
Ultimately, Daughter from Hell stands as a deeply frustrating testament to the current state of mainstream pop. What was promised as a mature, self-interrogating masterpiece instead crumbles into a boring, over-produced imitation of Olivia Rodrigo’s blueprint. The core issue here is emblematic of a broader epidemic: this new generation of mainstream artists is simply no longer willing to give us cohesive, intentional album experiences.
Instead of curating a seamless narrative arc, they stack a few genuinely great, slappy singles at the front and back up the rest of the runtime with sleepy, generic pop ballads designed to chase quick streaming metrics.
While highlights like “Hit the Wall” and “Look at My Life” prove that Gracie’s sharp storytelling skills are still intact, they are buried underneath cluttered electronic debris and agonizingly dull filler that could put an insomniac to sleep. It is easily one of the worst album experiences of the year. By prioritizing single virality over structural clarity, Abrams turns what could have been an incredible artistic evolution into a forgettable, fragmented mess.
[Rating: 4/10]
- Favorite Tracks: Hit the Wall, Look at My Life, minibar
- Least Favorite Tracks: Mews, Imaginary Friend, Afflictions, What If It’s Right, Cold Goodbyes
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