During the closing track of mightily impressive third record, ‘Violins’, the L.A. songwriter imagines herself walking down the aisle, with the jarring, incongruent melody of providing a comically unsuitable soundtrack. It’s a metaphor that perfectly encapsulates the difficulty of attempting to take control of your life – and the mistakes that inevitably come with it. When the track then turns to the act of creation as a way of offloading those very anxieties and frustrations, it’s not only pleasingly meta but further highlights Teitelbaum’s deftness and evolution as a writer: “Paint a wall with the things you want spoken out loud / And you get the choice to forget / And you render art / And the truth of it as separate” she sings over a sea of overdriven guitars.
Under the guise of Blondshell, Teitelbaum’s music has always oscillated with restrained beauty and fascinating contradictions. However, ‘Violins’ is the finest distillation of her work so far, a near-perfect balance of thoughtful, poetic lyricism and thrillingly adroit alternative rock. The visceral ‘Stone Fruit’ is a prime example. Loaded with tactile imagery, crashing buzzsaw guitars, and Teitelbaum’s stacked harmonies, it locates a chaos reminiscent of her early single . Similarly, the grinding industrial clatter of ‘Heart Tries To Work So Hard’ features gloriously heavy production, underscored with hissing menace: “I’m sitting in the sun / You’re laying on your side / I turn to face the lake / And you turn to twist the knife.”
The title track serves as a beautiful and powerful ode to healing, while ‘Lucky’ is a graceful, heady rush of pulsing drums and piano, evoking The National at their grandest. Perhaps most impressive is how successfully Teitelbaum weaves in new musical architecture. ‘Sea Legs’ centres around a lush, dream-pop-inspired backdrop but ‘New Age Trojan Horse’ is equally as surprising. Leaning even further into a new wave aesthetic that she experimented with on her previous record, ‘If You Asked For A Picture’, the track is both gratifyingly hooky yet undeniably biting: “Sometimes I see men romanticize war / 1965 mind in a new age Trojan horse / With a book and a bag said sometimes I cry / And I only buy vinyl to keep the album alive.” Meanwhile, ‘Knotted’ and ‘Reinstall’ begin intimately, but both end in a momentous wail of gorgeous sonics.
This feels like the record Sabrina Teitelbaum’s career has been building towards: a phenomenal fusion of barbed, complex writing and ambitious craft with her penchant for moulding irresistible rock tunes, musically expanding her palette without sacrificing the immediacy of her earlier work. Everything great about Blondshell is present on ‘Violins’, but it feels sharper, more adventurous and more assured then ever before.
9/10