Blondshell works out what she wants by saying it out loud

First, she was just Sabrina, uploading songs to Soundcloud and playing open mics on the Lower East Side. She didn’t go to performing arts school, so she spent all of her free time working on music. In uni, she was BAUM, experiencing Los Angeles for the first time and pining for pop stardom. Teitelbaum was performing often and cementing herself into an exciting creative community. But, something didn’t feel quite right. 

Blondshell was born in 2019, with an acoustic demo of a raw, grungy song called “Olympus.” “I wanna save myself, you’re part of my addiction / I just keep you in the kitchen while I burn,” she admits in the pre-chorus. “Olympus” allowed Teitelbaum to embrace a sound that felt truer to her craft. “It sounds like such a stark transition from the outside because anybody else just hears what you put out,” she says. “But, I had been growing for a long time, and that was gradual for me, from where I was standing.”

Teitelbaum recalls a conversation with producer and close friend Yves Rothman (FKA Twigs, Girlpool), in the days leading up to the release of her self-titled debut record in 2023. “[Rothman] said to me, ‘You realize this is a rock record, right?’ And I was like, ‘Yes I do.’ And I remember him being like, ‘You’re cool with that, right? I just want to make sure.’” Three years later, Teitelbaum is approaching the release of her third record Violins and cooler than ever.

When we talk, she's home in LA and – after weeks promoting the record – decided to treat herself to a piano. “I’m really not tech savvy, so I don’t have a great setup in my house,” she says. “I’m always more willing to write if I have acoustic instruments, so I was like, ‘Fuck it. I want to buy a piano.’”

Teitelbaum has played the piano since she was a kid, along with the guitar. “Whenever there was exposure to music, I was just always really obsessed with it. And, kind of, addicted to it,” she said. She pokes fun at her brother for liking “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” - A young Teitelbaum opted for higher-brow stuff … like David Bowie and The Beatles. “I fell in love super hard with music on my dad’s iPod,” she says.

“When I was a really little kid, I remember my parents being like, ‘Do you want to take singing lessons after school?’ Teitelbaum says. “And I remember feeling like, ‘Oh, do you guys think I'm a bad singer that I'm supposed to take lessons?’” Shortly after Teitelbaum and her parents cleared up the misunderstanding, she started taking vocal lessons. 

Teitelbaum was in high school in the 2010s, the heyday of New York City indie music. “What a time to be alive!” she laughs. At the time, she was listening to Sharon Van Etten, Lana Del Rey, and a slew of unnamed “dude bands.” In 2015, she graduated and relocated to LA to study songwriting at the University of Southern California.

At USC, Teitelbaum received technical music training for the first time - namely music theory and how to harmonise. After completing her performance classes, she decided to drop-out to avoid her leftover gen-eds. “I was like, ‘I cannot write essays any longer. I have done it for so much of my life,” she says. “I want to be playing shows.’”

Teitelbaum discovered new wave music in her early years of living in LA. “When I found new wave, I was in my freshman year of college, and it totally changed my life,” she muses. Talking Heads, Television, and The Velvet Underground became what Teitelbaum describes as her “forever stuff” - along with britpop.

In 2019, Teitelbaum met Yves Rothman during a period of “session dating.” “That’s my guy, I love him,” she says. Teitelbaum spends more time with Rothman than with most other people. “We have made a lot of music together that hasn’t seen the light of day, and shouldn’t,” she laughs. “Then, we made my first record in August of 2021, and yeah, we just work really well together.” 

Originally, Teitelbaum’s goal was to get better at playing guitar, but ended up writing an album instead. “I just was procrastinating and ended up writing because I don’t like practicing,” she says. 

Blondshell, released in 2023, was Teitelbaum’s highly anticipated debut. With its 90s-style shredding guitar and vulnerable lyricism discussing her sobriety and fraught relationships, the confessional record quickly found a home in the indie rock zeitgeist. 

Between her debut and sophomore record If You Asked For A Picture, Teitelbaum experienced a major career transition. “I went from not really working as a musician to definitely working as a musician, and I went from not touring to touring a lot” she says. Teitelbaum was officially in her late-20s, reflecting on her childhood and attempting to plan her future. “I think I was 27 when it came out, and that’s, kind of, a perfect age to be thinking about all that … What do I want my life to look like, and what are my options?”

If You Asked For A Picture, which Teitelbaum released last year, explores coming-of-age, mental health challenges, and complex family dynamics. A subsequent deluxe version, Another Picture, features Gigi Perez, Conor Oberst, Samia, and more. “It makes me really happy to make albums,” Teitelbaum says. “That’s the thing that I like the most - more than any other part of doing this. I just like being in the studio a lot, and so I always want to do it as much as I can.”

Shortly after she completed If You Asked For A Picture, Teitelbaum started writing Violins. “I turned my second record in, and I was like, ‘Cool, I’m done. I’m gonna take some time to chill,’” she says. “And then I ended up feeling inspired and having a lot to say … I really don’t like to not be writing.” Teitelbaum’s creative process is simple; she writes at home with her guitar, demos with Rothman and guitarist Sam Stewart (Olivia Rodrigo, Kelsey Lu), then books a week in a larger studio to record with a live band. 

Before writing, Teitelbaum always makes a playlist to share with Rothman. “It’s not necessarily a playlist to say, ‘This is what our record should sound like,’” she clarifies. “It’s just, ‘Here’s what I’m listening to.’” For Violins, the playlist consisted of “a lot of guitar-heavy stuff” - Brian Eno, Teenage Fanclub, Arthur Russell, Television (“I’m always listening to Television”), and Sade, among others.

Admittedly, Teitelbaum isn’t a fan of destination recording sessions. “I’m a Taurus through and through,” she says. “I like being with my things. I like being in my house with my dog.” She has always recorded in LA, this time at EastWest Studios in West Hollywood. 

“There are people who will move from LA and go to Greece, or France, or whatever and live somewhere really romantic for two weeks and make a record,” Teitelbaum says. “Staying in someone else’s house, or in a hotel, or something. That’s not for me. But, I think it’s sick when other people do it!’” We agree it’d be too hard to focus on making music in Greece. “If I were in Greece, I’m swimming, I’m jumping off cliffs, I’m eating fish. I’m not in a studio,” she laughs.

Teitelbaum has spent much of her adult life living and working in LA. Her body has adjusted to the warmth of Southern California, but she’s sick of the industry talk. “The thing that’s tough about LA is that everybody works in entertainment, and that can be a bummer,” she says. You just want to have different perspectives and hear different types of conversationion, and it can be a lot of the same stuff.” She echoes Chloë Sevigny’s critique of LA, the “brightness” and monotony of constant sunshine. 

On my first listen of Violins, I noticed how delicately it grapples with platonic relationships. “I think that stuff has just as much potential to break your heart,” Teitelbaum says. “... Those are the biggest relationships in [our] lives, and I will always have stuff to say about them.” On the record's second track “Heart Has To Work So Hard,” she tells of a friendship that feels laborious, yet sacred. The pair sit in the sun, and Teitelbaum is oblivious to the emotional danger she’s in. “I turn to face the lake / And you turn to twist the knife,” she sings honestly over gritty electric guitar. 

“I’m a big believer that you can come back from most things in relationships, friendships, family, etc,” she says. “And, I usually will start writing when I’m pissed, and the song will be a lot of anger, and ‘here’s what you did,’ and ‘here’s why I’m upset about it.’ And then, by the end, it usually turns into ‘here’s why I love you anyway, and here’s what I did too.” In the next lines, Teitelbaum reminds her struggling friend that she “see[s] through all the shame” and still wants to be close. 

On “New Shape,” Teitelbaum follows the same pattern - of accusing, then forgiving. “You slip out beneath the thumb of my understanding / Every time I think I know you, you shift to a new shape,” she sings in the chorus, to another disloyal subject. Teitelbaum follows with reassurance, “I see you and I know that I’m indebted.” Her empathetic nature is apparent on Violins - the ability to “see” people, even when they do us wrong. 

The first three singles of Violins are “Heart Has To Work So Hard,” “Violins,” and “Fur Elise” - which Teitelbaum refers to as “sister songs” because of their sonic similarities. They’re also her favourite songs on the record. “Violins,” the lead single, is all about pursuing healing.  “I hope heads don’t roll / They rest lightly on your shoulder,” Teitelbaum repeats in the song’s refrain. 

“I think that there should be more gentle interactions in the world, and that was my way of saying that in a world where you’re told to make shit happen constantly, and productivity is everything, and success at all costs - I hope that you don’t actually do that, and I hope that you don’t make heads roll,” she says. “I hope that you actually just have a soft touch.”

In the song’s music video, Teitelbaum is trying to save an ice sculpture of a fawn from melting in a Backrooms-esque office space. Blood and water droplets drip from the sculpture, and her Carrie Bradshaw curls blow in the breeze of three hair dryers, hopefully set to cool. “When I got there, I remember feeling like, ‘Oh my god, I need to save this fawn because it’s so cute and it’s daunting,’” she says. “It felt very easy to shoot it that day because I felt truly emotional about it.”

Teitelbaum worked with creative director Amy Davis (André 3000, Carly Rae Jepsen) to develop the record’s visual concept, including the music video. “She really understood the music,” she says. Teitelbaum and Davis had a “very collaborative relationship,” regularly exchanging voice notes and Substack clips. “I feel more excited about the visuals for this record than I have about any music I’ve made before,” she says.

“Lucky” shines a light on Teitelbaum’s dry, sarcastic sense of humour (“I didn’t mean it when I said ‘I’m beautiful and rested’”). She is hardly ever rested, having struggled with insomnia for many years. 

In this acoustic guitar-driven ballad, she lists some of her simple pleasures: lemon cake, her mother’s necklace, and “walking Francis Street in Dublin.” “I’m lucky / I got lucky,” she sings in the chorus, as if she’s trying to convince herself of something. Teitelbaum considered releasing “Lucky” as a single but opted against it - she worried it’d be misunderstood. “I wanted to, sort of, let people find it differently,” she says. 

The facade breaks when Teitelbaum realises the world is still on fire. “We were touring at a time when there was a string of terrible violence in the news…” she says. “I mean, there still is. There always is.” “She’s alive in my memory she said that she had cancer / The truth is too complex for a kid,” she sings in the second verse, defaulting to traumatic childhood memories of loss and grief.

Violins hones in on Teitelbaum’s relationship with body image, sex, and gender. On “Two Fried,” she interprets her body as a house, “covered in testosterone,” with two fried eggs for legs. Teitelbaum wrote the verses with close friend and fellow indie princess Samia, when she was visiting LA. “We were reading Leonard Cohen poems to try to find stuff to write about, which I know sounds really obnoxious,” she laughs. “... You know what? I’m gonna put that on [Samia]. That’s something she came in with.” 

Teitelbaum finished “Two Fried” in the studio when she had a “ticking time clock” to finish the record - she tends to work best with a deadline. The final product is reminiscent of early Paramore, with punchy drums and a driving bassline. 

“New Age Trojan Horse” is a song about periods. “What if I was like, ‘What are you talking about? Like, that’s really offensive…,” Teitelbaum jokes when I breach the topic. She doesn’t mind getting her blood drawn and thinks it’s annoying when men are grossed out by period blood (“You’re cringe if you think periods are nasty”). Teitelbaum sings about her face changing when she’s PMSing, which is a true fact. “Truly, I look different and I feel different,” she says. 

Teitelbaum describes her relationship with gender as more of a curiosity than a hardship. “Writing about gender itself doesn’t feel particularly heavy to me,” she says. “My experience with gender has been one that I have explored and thought about a lot, but it isn’t one that I have had a ton of pain over.” 

For Teitelbaum, “Violins” and sixth track “Stone Fruit” are the heaviest songs on the record. “I think a lot of stuff has been coming out, like, when you have a dream and there’s not really a narrative - It’s just the images,” she says, on writing “Stone Fruit,” the record’s final single. “I care to stick to you like a clot” reminds me of my favourite, most gut-wrenching Sufjan Stevens lyric from “Goodbye Evergreen”: “Think of me as what you will / I grow like a cancer.” To liken natural human behaviours - like aging and connection - to most hazardous medical woes is visceral and utterly brilliant. 

In the song’s closing verse, Teitelbaum sings, “You feel ugly when you think you see their thoughts / I feel ugly when they ask if I’d drop bombs.” “I think the idea of feeling ugly in other people’s eyes is something that I wrote about on this record quite a bit. Feeling beautiful and feeling ugly,” she says. “... I like being able to say it plainly instead of saying it through metaphors.” 

Despite this, my conversation with Teitelbaum is riddled with metaphors. She compares her relationship to music to a relationship with a person. “It goes through so many different iterations and changes and grows when you get older,” she says, on the evolution of her taste, writing style, and sound. 

Later, we discuss the “clunky metaphor” of album closer “Fur Elise.” The song employs Teitelbaum’s signature quiet verses that burst into crunchy electric guitar-driven catharsis. “Fur Elise” reckons with growing up and learning to exercise one’s autonomy, though not really knowing how. Teitelbaum compares this process to walking down the aisle to the classical piano song she learned in her youth. 

“I wanna think about a wedding when I go to sleep / Walk down the aisle to a string quartet playing Fur Elise,” she sings. Instead of counting sheep, Teitelbaum faces crippling decision paralysis. “You’re trying to figure out what you want your life to look like, and what you want playing at your wedding, but you don’t even know where to start,” the press release reads. “You’re picking the wrong song.” Simply put, nobody would get married to “Fur Elise.”

Ultimately, Violins ends on Teitelbaum’s terms. “I think that idea of figuring out what you want through talking about what you want is in all of my music,” she says. It’s been in all of my records, and so it’s nice to end with that.” In the song’s final verse, she proclaims, “I’d sell all my clothes and still be me.” Here, Teitelbaum is self-assured, confident, and ready to move forward.

Days before our conversation, Phoebe Bridgers released her third record Lost Weekend. Bridgers is Teitelbaum’s favourite artist and one of her biggest songwriting inspirations. “I don’t like to say it because [she’s] everyone’s favourite artist, but that’s the case for a reason,” she says. She loves “Kill Me” and “As Above,” which she later deems “the best written song [she’s] ever heard in [her] life” on Instagram stories.

“God bless good music, honestly,” she says. There is something religious about a season of new releases; “I feel like things are looking up for us, as listeners,” she says, and is especially excited for Julia Jacklin, Fontaines D.C., and her third Blondshell baby. “As an artist and as a writer, I’ve gotten more comfortable with taking risks and not having to follow formulas,” Teitelbaum tells me. She gives an example of shifting to writing songs in a lower register for her first record. “Before I made a full album, I used to sing a lot higher,” she says. “And that was a really big moment for me when I was like, ‘Why? Who am I singing difficult parts for?’ Who is like, ‘Good job! You sang a really high note.’”

Teitelbaum has drastically grown into herself since her debut four years ago. “When I put [Blondshell] out … I had never done it before, so I didn’t know what my preferences were,” she says. “I didn’t know what was right for me in the process because I literally had never gone through [it].” On this go-around, Teitelbaum radiates the aforementioned sense of autonomy and self-assuredness. “I felt like I didn’t need to overexplain anything, like I can trust the people listening more,” she says.

With each release, she grows more confident in the work she’s putting out into the world. “It feels like every time I make a record, I get closer to making the thing that I really want to make,” she says. “... This record just feels like I can make the experience my own.”

Teitelbaum looks forward to audiences receiving and hearing Violins, yet she expects her relationship with the record to stay the same. “I feel situated with putting it out. I feel excited to get it out, but I feel solid in the way I hear it,” she says. “I don’t feel too terribly precious about how people hear it.”