Gracie Abrams' new album is all knives and ghosts but sounds like birthday cake

Gracie Abrams just dropped her third album, and it's basically a horror movie soundtrack written by someone who's never actually seen one. Daughter from Hell — a nod to how much the 26-year-old stressed her parents out as a teenager — is packed with imagery that'd make a goth kid nod approvingly. Slip knots, blades, bullets, ghosts, cages, drugs, car crashes, blood, burial, burning houses, drowning. The list goes on.

Here's the thing though. All that dark stuff? It doesn't actually sound dark. The songs are relentlessly, almost aggressively pretty. There's this weird mismatch between what Abrams is saying and how she's saying it — like she's describing a crime scene while serving you frosting on a tiny spoon. The record feels bloodless, which kind of defeats the purpose when you're trying to prove you're emotionally complex.

She's definitely left a mark on pop music. Her bedroom recordings helped inspire Olivia Rodrigo to write Drivers License, which basically launched Rodrigo into the stratosphere. But Abrams herself? She's basically a really good remix of other people. You can hear Lorde's vocal tricks, Phoebe Bridgers' whisper-close intimacy, Taylor Swift's storytelling. Swift's producer Aaron Dessner co-produced this too. Even Bon Iver shows up, jumping out at you with his falsetto on a couple tracks.

The whole thing has that Folklore vibe — sparkly acoustic guitars with a bit of clap-stomp energy mixed in. It sounds like secrets being told in the dark. Which works if you're 17 and convinced nobody's ever felt anything as intensely as you have. And honestly, that's who listens to this stuff. Her fanbase is young, which means they get why a song about drowning or choking or whatever lands like a personal confession rather than a performance.

But if you're past that stage? It can feel a bit like a starter pack. Pretty enough to listen to. Dramatic enough to feel something. Just not quite brave enough to actually say anything that hits.