Touch Girl Apple Blossom - Graceful (2026)
Artist: Touch Girl Apple Blossom
Author: Sarah
Date: 05/07/2025
Listen: Bandcamp | Other services forthcoming!
That's right, it's a review published before the album release date, almost as if I'm a real music critic who gets advance copies of big releases and everything! (It's because they were selling copies early at Big Pop Show back in March.)
When Touch Girl Apple Blossom released their debut EP, I was still a few months away from having my love for indiepop reignited. Unfortunately, that means that I never truly gave that EP a fair shot, and if I’m being honest, to this day I still can’t listen to it without being put back in the mindset of when I first heard it back in 2023. Luckily, Graceful is a massive leap forward for the band in every sense.
For starters, this is easily one of the best sounding indiepop albums I’ve heard in years. From start to finish, the guitars in particular truly shine in a way that I’m not sure I’ve heard anyone aside from Roger McGuinn equal (okay, well there’s a non-jangling guitar part here and there that reminds me of David Crosby’s less-gorgeous rhythm playing, but you get the picture). It really made a lot of sense when I learned that Olivia was formerly a member of Hotline TNT; while I’m not particularly a fan of shoegaze in general, I’ve got to give shoegazers credit for typically knowing their way around a guitar tone. The bass and drums don’t really distinguish themselves, but when it comes to jangle pop all you really need is the guitar and the songwriting.
Unfortunately, while the songwriting on Graceful is improved (and more ambitious) compared to the EP, Touch Girl Apple Blossom still haven’t really put it together yet. For example, the lead single, “The Springtime Reminds Me Of…”, attempts to play a trick on us, leaving the chorus intentionally unresolved so that we keep waiting for a release of tension that never comes. It’s a neat concept, but alas the song is just a bit too flat dynamically to really build up any of that tension, so instead of waiting at the edge of our seats for the chorus, the song just kind of deflates. Overall, I feel like the choruses here fall a bit flat, actually, with the exception of “Heart-Go”, which I’ve been singing to myself for a few days now. On the other hand, as someone who’s typically staunchly anti-jam, I actually really like the jam at the end of “Big Star Shinin’”, because when the guitars sound that good, how can you not want to listen to more of them?
In the two and a half years since their EP, Touch Girl Apple Blossom have been silently integrating themselves into the indiepop scene nationwide, and it’s clear that with Graceful, they’re well-poised to fully reemerge in a blaze of glory, or at least as close to glory as you can get while performing in a niche genre of a niche genre. Even while I’m not convinced by the songs themselves, and even as someone who isn’t usually won over by sound alone, I’m finding myself more and more won over by just how great the album sounds every time I listen to it. Especially in light of their contribution to the Providence Popfest compilation (can you believe they held their best song over for that?), I feel like they could easily become one of my favorite bands going, even if this album alone isn’t quite enough to put them there.