The Associated Press reviewed Gracie Abrams' third album, "Daughter from Hell," on Monday, four days before its Friday release on Interscope Records [1]. Critic Elise Ryan filed the verdict on all 16 tracks while the fandom that will actually decide the record's fate had heard none of them.

Ryan's ledger is technical, not devotional. She credits Aaron Dessner, Abrams' longtime collaborator, for the guitar riffs and shaker-and-tambourine textures that build the title track, and marks "The Knife" as a highlight for the way a stripped piano ballad turns itself over to drums, electric guitar and a 21-piece orchestra. Abrams' voice, Ryan writes, has "strengthened since her restrained debut, 2023's 'Good Riddance,'" though the poetry "only sometimes" trips on itself. That is progression measured against a back catalogue, not a confession scored for its sincerity.

The gap that matters is exactly there. Abrams' listeners will grade "Daughter from Hell" by identification -- the recurring knife stabbed "in the heart or stuck in her side," the plea in "Death Wish" ("'Til you twist the knife with a smile while you kill me?"), the daughter who wants her mother's "patience... grace... sugar." AP grades the songwriting and the production. A reader who reaches only for the fan frame learns whether the album feels true; a reader who reaches only for AP learns whether it is well made. Neither answers the third question -- what Friday's streaming totals say -- and that number does not yet exist.

Fans will decide whether "Daughter from Hell" feels true; AP has already decided it is well made [1].

-- ANNA WEBER, Berlin