See Gracie Abrams Explore Sullen New Depths in Bon Iver’s ‘Beach Baby’
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Gracie Abrams paid tribute to one of her influences recently, playing Bon Iver’s “Beach Baby” during a live appearance on SiriusXM Hits 1. She gently strummed an echoey acoustic guitar, and quietly intoned the lyrics: “Once a time, put a tongue in your ear, on the beach,” she sang, “And you clutched clicking heels.”
Overall, Abrams chose to make the guitar sound more opaque than the vocals, which is the opposite of Bon Iver’s original recording, which appeared as a bonus track on the 10th anniversary edition of their 2009 EP, Blood Bank. (Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon has said the song is about “where your ex-girlfriend is sleeping with someone else but you get to dream about the time you used to make out with her on the beach.”)
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While at SiriuxXM, Abrams also performed her own song “I Know It Don’t Work,” which appears on this year’s Good Riddance album. With a guitar accompaniment, she clenched her eyes and focused on the vocals, singing, “Part of me wants you back, but I know it won’t work like that.” It’s a quieter, more somber performance than the full band rendition she performed a few months back on Jimmy Kimmel Live!
Abrams spoke to the cathartic power of songwriting in a Rolling Stone interview earlier this year. “I feel really more grateful than I ever have for what songwriting has provided me just as a person outside of music,” she said. “I grew up using it as a tool to process shit but like … to have done it and to finish something … I very much felt like I had kind of done the grieving and really let go of what I needed to.”
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