Piroutte is a risky and versatile outing from Model/Actriz

With their new album, Pirouette, they opt for restraint, employing more conventional, albeit still-compelling, rhythms and tones. Singer Cole Haden, who throughout Dogsbody veered between playing punk poet and tortured performance artist, now stands at a proverbial ground zero, assessing and/or making peace with existential wreckage. In this way, the band strive for new gestalts, seeking fresh approaches to document the turbulence of contemporary life.

“Vespers” launches with a new wave-y/proggy guitar riff. Haden dives into oblique lyrics, addressing the way we turn to pleasant memories to distract ourselves from the present (“It’s all the days I saved to dry / it’s all the days I wait to flower”). The band demonstrate an ability to sustain a relatively straightforward MO. Haden resists a default pivot into hyper-urgency.

“Cinderella” is built around a trebly drone. Haden lauds a love interest, navigating a blend of lust and appreciation for the person’s character (“In your eyes I am naked”, “I notice you are noble you are kind”). Whereas with Dogsbody he might’ve emphasized the sexual or even listed toward the pornographic, here he’s a bit detached, possibly enjoying something like old-fashioned anticipation.

“Poppy” uses a similar playbook, staccato guitar blasts and an agitated pace bringing to mind recent work by Gilla Band. Haden moves between elegy and anthem, romantic ode and punk missive. “Diva” is Haden’s commentary on the bar scene, global trends, and the frequent vapidity of cosmopolitanism (“No home to take you home to / I live alone with my material”). “Headlights” is his spoken-word stab at confessional poetry, a diaristic documentation of early struggles with body image, low confidence levels, and fantasy attractions.

“All I want is to be beautiful”, Haden moans on “Departures”, capturing one of Model/Actriz’s perennial themes (here and on Dogsbody): the yearning to be other versus accepting oneself as is. The soundscape lurches in a dancey direction, reminiscent of the clubby side of Mandy, Indiana or the pop/less industrial aspects of Heartworms. While Dogsbody spotlights Haden plowing through his insecurities, Pirouette shows him more vulnerably facing them. The band, accordingly, is less volatile, balancing crescendos with a background orientation.

The harsher “Ring Road”, meanwhile, revisits the MO adopted throughout much of Dogsbody. Jack Wetmore’s guitars are soaked in distortion. Ruben Radlauer’s drums hint at arrhythmia. Haden is battered by the mix. That said, there’s a hint of equanimity to his voice. If his burial in cacophony is symbolic of death – literally or of a long-held identity – Haden seems willing to surrender, if that’s what fate requires.

On the austere “Baton”, Haden questions whether personality is simply a construct by which we strive for belonging, individuality, respect, etc. He notes the way relationships, even important ones, inevitably change and/or fade. Additionally, he observes the ruthless passage of time (nearing his late-twenties, he’s pondering mortality!). The song ultimately reflects Haden’s attempt to come to terms with the way we’re all split between different sides of who we are (“Carnage miracles hysterics / … triumphs follies punchlines / you’ve been the narrator”). Can inner conflict, ambivalence, and/or uncertainty be resolved? Or are these dissonances part and parcel of being alive?

Pirouette points to the band’s emotional and sonic versatility, even as the tracks occasionally feel elusive or oddly impalpable. To be fair, this elusiveness is, on one hand, charming, even seductive; on the other, it often seems as if something’s missing – an energetic immediacy, perhaps, a presence that can’t be ignored. All in all, Pirouette is an intriguing segue album. Even if it falls short of the cogency displayed on Dogsbody, Model/Actriz should be applauded for their creative restlessness, the risks they wholeheartedly take.