Blondshell

Album review

As Blondshell, Sabrina Teitelbaum manages to reflect the zeitgeist by channeling a past she's too young to know. Her debut sounds completely right now while also tapping into the same rage that has fueled the music of women such as Courtney Love, Liz Phair and Fiona Apple. Against a raggedly sawing guitar that explodes into a whole grunge landscape, she sings about watching Veronica Mars as a kid and how she realizes now how pop culture influenced her in all the wrong ways: "Logan's a dick/ I'm learning that's hot." Teitelbaum, who grew up in the center of Manhattan, has said the song is about how she wishes she had been more protected "from graphic TV and film, from New York City, overwhelming lyrics, etc… (for example, growing up to think men are hot if they're assholes)." It's a theme she echoes on "Joiner," which floats pretty and free as a cloud—"Think you watched way too much HBO growing up/ Now you got one arm cut/ And when you eat you throw up," she sings, punctuating that last line by exaggeratedly gagging. It's a form of irony at a time when adults are so worried about kids' exposure to TikTok and other social media; in many ways, the monster was in the house all this time. Teitelbaum shows how all those TV and movie romances confused her on "Kiss City," which starts off as a pop ballad before flying off the handle in a monstrous rage. "I felt like everybody just wanted casual things, and I don't want casual things. So what's wrong with me? That's why the song starts out so quiet, because I was like, should I be ashamed of these feelings? Is this embarrassing? And by the end I was like, fuck it—whatever. This is how I feel and I'm going to scream it," Teitelbaum has said. And when she sings a brutally honest line like "I think my kink is when you tell me that you think I'm pretty," you can't help but be reminded of early Phair. There are shades, too, of early Apple on "Olympus," about not being able to resist a romance even while knowing it's toxic and understanding it will cause self-harm. Like Phair, Teitelbaum is able to draw rich metaphors from ugly or everyday occurrences. She returns to a bad relationship on "Sepsis," which blooms from a languid mid-tempo number into a big rock power ballad—her out-of-control scream puncturing a swirl of guitar and  pummeling drum—and compares her love life to the sneaky, quiet infection that can so quickly turn fatal. And "Salad," with its ominous rhythm and badass guitars (circa Celebrity Skin-era Hole), acts out a revenge fantasy in the most Gen Z way: "Put some poison in his salad," Teitelbaum sings. "Look what you did/ You make a killer of a Jewish girl." A next big thing worthy of the hype. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz