Gracie Abrams has at all times been a confessional and open songwriter. Since rising with the ‘Minor’ EP in 2020, the 24-year-old has dealt in candid lyricism and diaristic indie pop. Her debut full-length document, final 12 months’s ‘Good Riddance’, crystallised this successful system – it was a “deeply intimate portrait of progress” painted over producer Aaron Dessner’s distinct system of folksy instrumentals and skittering electronics.
On her second album ‘The Secret of Us’, although, there’s a brand new intimacy. Right here Abrams is crying on the dancefloor and sharing her interior ideas along with her closest buddies within the smoking space. However she isn’t shrinking her sound. Supporting Taylor Swift on the Eras tour, “fully altered” Abrams’ personal songwriting, she revealed just lately: “At totally different factors within the reveals [she] makes it really feel like an intimate venue even if there are 80,000 or 100,000 individuals sharing the house… That’s what I need so badly, as a result of the enjoyment is infectious.”
You’ll be able to hear this affect within the songs with lyrics that really feel designed to be screamed again in a reside setting: take the breathless bridge of ‘Free Now’, the place Abrams explores the aid an waning relationship can convey (“It’s a ache that I caught you at a nasty time/It’s a disgrace that I memorised your define”), or the bitter eyeroll of ‘Blowing Smoke’ (which has contributions from Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon): “If she’s received a pulse, she meets your requirements now”. And naturally, Swift herself options on the music ‘Us’, which wouldn’t sound misplaced on the famous person’s twin information ‘Folklore’ and ‘Evermore’ – two albums that Abrams’ common collaborator Dessner, who co-produced ‘The Secret of Us’, additionally famously labored on.
Musically ‘The Secret of Us’ falls near Swift’s people flip, in addition to the work of Phoebe Bridgers – however there are echoes of Lorde’s effervescent second album ‘Melodrama’. Abrams mimics the songs’ visceral feelings of their sonics: the fizzing feeling of countless risk that may include heartache (‘Free Now’, ‘Regular Factor’), the enjoyment of feminine friendships (‘Powerful Love’), and the all-encompassing euphoria of recent crushes (‘Shut To You’). All through, tracks circle the dancefloor. On ‘Regular Factor’, subdued synths are accompanied by the ebb and circulation of percolating beats, the anticipation of a breakdown flying below the floor and by no means fairly erupting into clubby, full-blown euphoria.
This launch arrives within the album’s finale, although. Awaited by followers since Abrams shared a clip of it in 2017, the megawatt ‘Shut To You’ provides the artist her ‘Inexperienced Gentle’ second. It’s a breathless flourish of lush synth pulses and layered backing vocals. Lorde apart, it additionally evokes information like Swift’s ‘1989’ or Carly Rae Jepsen’s ‘Emotion’: ’80s-indebted pop by a contemporary lens. The vocals spill out, as if on pins and needles, with Abrams professing: “I burn for you, and also you don’t even know my identify/should you requested me to, I’d quit every thing”.
It’s a second of pure pop catharsis that leans into the great, unhealthy and messy of infatuation. That is the enjoyment of ‘The Secret of Us’: it doesn’t shrink back from the complicated or contradictory. Right here Gracie Abrams embraces her rising pains and celebrates enduring the tough moments. She’s by no means sounded higher.
Particulars:
- Launch date: June 21
- Report label: Interscope Data
