Gracie and Rachel - If We Could, Would We (Album)

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Gracie and Rachel are like a Venn diagram. They are separate people with their own trajectories — yet they are eternally bound to each other. At certain angles, they might look as if they’re being pulled apart. At others, the diagram’s inner circle reveals a collection of commonalities holding them together in an embrace. On their spellbinding and unflinchingly honest fourth album, 'If We Could, Would We,' the indie-pop duo invite listeners deep into their private worlds — the ones belonging to Gracie Coates and Rachel Ruggles, and the one they have been steadily building together for many years.

The most personal and daring album of their career thus far, 'If We Could, Would We' asks important questions about potential regret and openness, ultimately concluding that the only way out is through. It also finds Gracie and Rachel sharing space again after coming to a crossroads in their personal and professional lives. After the release of their 2023 EP Nowhere Now Here, Gracie spent part of the next year working on solo material, a journey that eventually led her back to Rachel, who was working through the end of a long-term relationship. As Gracie and Rachel reconnected after a brief time apart, they solidified what would become 'If We Could, Would We' at a residency in Estonia. The resulting record is another Venn diagram, with each artist contributing their own four solo songs and meeting in the middle with four Gracie and Rachel tracks.

“What was different about this record was that we actually made a lot of it without consulting the other person,” Gracie says. “I think a lot of the music is about that diverging of paths and creating new beginnings in our personal relationships and with one another.”

Before they became renowned for their innovative brand of elevated pop, complete with baroque string work and piercingly spare song structures, and before they were signed to Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe Records, Gracie and Rachel were just two high school friends in Berkeley, California. Rachel’s classical background was an unexpected compliment to Gracie’s singer-songwriter artistry, and together the two started playing open mics around town as teenagers before moving together to Brooklyn and releasing their debut self-titled LP, which NPR tastemaker Bob Boilen later named as one of his favorites of the year.

Over the years, Gracie and Rachel released additional albums, earned more critical praise from NPR (All Songs Considered, Tiny Desk Concerts) and outlets like American Songwriter, Flaunt, and Paste Magazine, and shared stages with everyone from Ani DiFranco to Tori Amos, Julien Baker, and Lucy Dacus. But time pulled them apart, too, with Gracie eventually moving upstate with her long-term partner and Rachel remaining in Brooklyn. 

Even as their paths diverged, Gracie and Rachel always found their way back to each other. Once reunited, they pushed themselves to keep growing. Sonically, If We Could, Would We expands their instrumentation, with Rachel incorporating the guitar on record for the first time and adding in a diverse array of other instruments and textures across tracks. Meanwhile, as a piece of art, If We Could, Would We symbolizes the duo’s ebbs and flows and even dares to wonder: If they could go back and do it all over again, knowing what they do now, would they? 

“It's a conversation that Gracie and I have had as a band when things have become difficult,” Rachel says of the album’s open-ended question. “Maybe we shouldn't have moved to New York together. Maybe we shouldn't have done this. Like, this is wild, this is fucking difficult. This is full of heartbreak. It takes so much work. Would we do it differently if we could? We may never know, but here we are. I still have hope and belief. I just want to keep telling the story.”

Gracie and Rachel’s new chapter begins with the album’s aptly titled lead single, “WTF,” which tiptoes in with trepidation and releases as the pair exhale in urgent harmony: How can I get out of this scene? To the band, “WTF” is the thesis statement of 'If We Could, Would We,' thematically spreading out to cover every subsequent track on the album. “WTF” is equal parts personal and universal. One reading finds Gracie and Rachel unfurling coexisting feelings of anxiety, paralysis, and apathy while asking themselves what their next steps should be. At the same time, “WTF” is a primal scream in reaction to the overall state of the world. “I think that the anxiety is really real in that song,” Gracie says. “And the rest of the songs on If We Could, Would We almost become little explorations of that anxiety. How do you get out — or not get out — of something that you aren’t feeling great in?”

Follow-up single, “How Can I” (written and performed by Gracie and the album’s collaborator Benjamin Lazar Davis), undulates with a gentle groove alongside Gracie’s lightly warped vocal. An especially vulnerable cut, “How Can I” follows Gracie as she faces a shifting dynamic with her longtime partner and can’t help but agonize about the consequences. “I've been with my partner for almost 12 years, and Rachel and I have been in a musical relationship for 10, and I was feeling a need to do this solo music work to unpack what I was going through in my relationships, and I needed to do that on my own,” Gracie says. “It was almost like I had unconditional love from both partners, and I was seeking conditional love. I needed to work harder on myself — to expand and come back to my relationships that are so meaningful to me, and not at all something I want to abandon, but need to branch out from in order to make it things stronger with them and be a better partner, a better collaborator.”

Meanwhile, Rachel poured her sense of loss and confusion around the end of her long-term relationship into a somber minimalist gem titled “Caroline,” which self-deprecatingly imagines the ideal next relationship her ex will have. “It's all wrapped up in this person’s quietness and how that made me spiral,” Rachel reveals. “This song is trying to relieve myself of that feeling of not being good enough by talking about some of my own truths or frustrations.”

Gracie and Rachel overlay their experiences on the piano-led ballad “Leaving Home Is Going Home,” where the pair harmonize about home being as much of a physical place as it is a peace you find within. “There's a reason you left something familiar, and it's to find a deeper meaning for yourself,” Gracie says. “Sometimes you need to leave a situation in order to know that you’re your own home. I think that that is something Rachel and I were simultaneously feeling in all of our situations.” 

Penultimate track “Myself Again” works to find resolution amid the turmoil as Gracie and Rachel harmonize: I’m taking care of myself again. Depending on your vantage point, the line could sound empowering, or it could read as defeated. Gracie and Rachel find beauty in the duality.

Gracie and Rachel would be lying if they said they weren’t nervous to get as personal as they do on 'If We Could, Would We.' But they can’t deny their need for this record’s catharsis — and its listeners won’t be able to either. Everything Gracie and Rachel have gone through, separately and together, has ultimately cleared the path back to each other, and their Venn diagram proves that, as their individual circles widen, the more expansive their center becomes.