Gracie Abrams: The Secret of Us – Indie-pop that will take some beating for integrity and directness

Gently plucked folksy guitars, trickling beats, assured vocals spinning confessional tales of hope, heartache and empowerment. Songs written with Aaron Dessner of The National, string arrangements by Rob Moose. Guest appearances by Justin Vernon, Jack Antonoff and Taylor Swift. We are in a phase of pop music that is either becoming generic and homogenised, overseen by the same cadre of songwriters and producers, or forging something different, an appealing tangent to what’s already out there.

Gracie Abrams (whose father, incidentally, is the film director JJ Abrams) is an American songwriter in her mid-20s who wrote her official debut album, Good Riddance, from 2023, with Dessner, so whatever creative template we have on The Secret of Us has been in place for a few years. The template produces results adjacent to the likes of Swift and Olivia Rodrigo (and a few others), but Abrams delivers music that connects.

Dessner has provided musical beds for Abrams’s lyrics to rest on. Smart admissions are everywhere. From disdainful thoughts about previous boyfriends (“If she’s got a pulse, she meets your standards now?” she sings on Blowing Smoke) to insights about spending time with them (“I waste my 20s on random men, not one of them is tougher than all my friends, and I hate to leave him bleedin’, but I know, know what I’m leavin’ for ...” as Tough Love goes), Abrams outlines the lives and loves of everysomethings in a series of diaristic indie-pop songs that will take some beating for their integrity and directness.