It was just about a year and a half ago that L.A. singer-songwriter Gracie Abrams released her debut EP 

, an introspective songbook of confessions that offered fans of bedroom pop pensive and pointed harmonies detailing the emotional fallout of a disintegrating relationship — all with promising signs of room for lyrical and melodic growth. Abrams’ presence in the subgenre earned her a following that now stands at roughly 5 million monthly Spotify listeners, with her last EP’s climactic track, “I miss you, I’m sorry,” amassing almost 70 million plays to date on the platform.


, Abrams transports listeners away from the isolation of her lockdown-era diary entries, opting instead to take them along for a vivid and evocative road trip through different scenes, moods, and moments in her recent life.


The project’s lead single and opening track, “Feels Like,” stands slightly apart from the rest of the tracklist narratively as it tells the story of the intimacy, loyalty, and companionship she finds in a close friend. Abrams then takes us through a rollercoaster of vulnerable thoughts, doubts, and emotions that spotlight insecurities and questions she has about herself, her relationships, and what living life will look like in the fast-approaching years.


“I never said it, but I know that I / Can’t picture anything past twenty-five / Not like I care to know the time and / Not like I’m looking for that silence,” she confesses on “Camden,” a song she told fans on an “Ask Me Anything” thread on 

 was the most difficult to write because it’s “more about my own issues rather than my issues in relationship to someone else.” “Camden” was also co-written and produced by The National and Big Red Machine’s Aaron Dessner, who brings piano chords just as contemplative and sincere as Abrams’ reflections in a beautiful blend of their sounds. Dessner also lends a hand in production to “Rockland,” “Hard to Sleep,” and “Augusta.”


 have their similarities, but their differences are notable and often what make each track on the new project unique. Where a few songs on 

 tend to blend together with the exception of “I miss you, I’m sorry,” and “21,” 

 boasts different melodies, lyrics, and production styles while still maintaining the thread of narrative consistency listeners can expect from a collection like this.


The most pleasantly jarring track on the project, “The Bottom,” exhibits Abrams’ ability to deliver unguarded self-deprecation over an upbeat drum and electric guitar riff—something radically different from the soft, slow-paced, and quiet ballads that comprise most of her discography. On “The Bottom,” Abrams tells a presumed love interest that they deserve better than her, that they should walk out, and that she’ll inevitably drag them “right down to the bottom.”


One of the most interesting things about the way 

 presents is the lyrical and narrative nuances that come with the project’s progression. Abrams casts self-doubt on her decisions and actions in past relationships and is quick to claim fault and responsibility on songs like “The Bottom” and “Rockland,” but also ponders if asking another love interest to “grow up” was simply too much to ask on “Wishful Thinking.” On “Painkillers,” she heartbreakingly marries the two sentiments with raw, cutting lyrics, singing, “I called you out and labelled you a problem… I should know that it takes one to know one.”


In her Reddit “Ask Me Anything,” Abrams also made clear that she doesn’t consider the project a traditional “album.” To her, its songs feel like a blend of different feelings and memories coming from a myriad of places rather than from a unified narrative — and it works. These songs come from different highs and lows and different pages of Abrams’ romantic and personal life, but they align in a way that’s consistent with just the right amount of lyrical and melodic diversity, and it’s a clear show of force for what Abrams is ready to bring next.


Gracie Abrams explores her fears, doubts, and hopes on "This Is What It Feels Like"

Six years, four albums, and countless hours on tour around the world have set the stage for Josephine Vander Gucht and Anthony West of alt-pop duo Oh Wonder to once again dive head first into the sets that soundtracked their rise to fame and their own romance since 2014. Fans last heard from the duo in the form of their early quarantine-inspired EP 

, a five-track collection of singles released over the course of the couple’s extended time at home under the UK’s lockdown between April and June 2020. Since then, the now Vander-Wests have opened their own London-based café and even took to social media in August to share photos of their wedding. But on 

, the long-standing duo fight their doubts, demons, and each other as the pandemic-prompted lockdown widens catastrophic cracks in their relationship.


Oh Wonder has repeatedly referred to their latest release as “the first break-up album in history written and recorded with the person you’re breaking up with,” and while 

 may have actually saved their relationship rather than ended it, its songs suggest a far greater degree of uncertainty about the fate of their romance and of Oh Wonder itself. Both lyrically and instrumentally, tracks like “Baby” and “Free” veer from the duo’s signature use of synchronized singing and instead give listeners much lonelier-sounding vocal performances from Josephine, whose voice on both tracks is isolated and accompanied by minimalistic production in a way that spotlights just how introspective, personal, and diary-like her feelings are.


“I’m just afraid that I’m failing / I’m just afraid that I’m done / I’m just afraid that I’m washed up and dried out and the water ain’t gonna save me,” she ponders softly on “Baby,” an opening track that informs listeners of just how unsure the duo were about their future together. Singing together once again in the darker moments that followed 

, the couple began to question their romantic troubles on the ironically upbeat-sounding “Down,” which showcases the return of their synchronized vocals layered with a steady drumbeat and notes of acoustic guitar, bass, clarinet, and woodwinds all harmoniously tied to their signature keyboard track and lyrics asking, “Am I gonna get this right?”


Tracks like “Don’t Let The Neighbourhood Hear” and “Kicking The Doors Down” capture the quintessential frustration, anxiety, and confusion of a relationship in disarray, but one with hopes for revival. The title track “22 Break” is the exploding result of the pent-up emotion and unspoken troubles that brought the duo to this point, with both of them belting, “It takes two to break a heart,” a refrain that bursts with piano, percussion, and horns just as loud.


 is raw, vulnerable, and more transparent than Oh Wonder has ever been before with songs that are less of the evergreen love pop anthems of their past records and more of the kind of personal entries that timestamp a very clear breaking point in their own lives, one from which they are rebounding from today. Not every experiment on the album lands, however, with Anthony’s jarring use of a Bon Iver-esque vocoder feeling somewhat out of place next to Josephine’s less-edited vocals for the tone and subject matter of tracks like “Twenty Fourteen,” a reflection on the couple’s beginnings and an optimistic look towards their future.


What Oh Wonder has ultimately given listeners and fans, though, is a riveting, introspective renewal of themselves to each other and to their sound for what’s to come.



Aidan McGovern