Blondshell Breaks Down Debut Self-Titled Album Track by Track: Exclusive
The post Blondshell Breaks Down Debut Self-Titled Album Track by Track: Exclusive appeared first on Consequence.
Track by Track is a recurring feature series in which artists guide readers through every song on their latest release. Today, Blondshell walks us through her upcoming self-titled debut.
Indie rock artist Blondshell, also known as Sabrina Teitelbaum, has shared an exclusive breakdown of each song on her debut self-titled album one day ahead of its release on April 7th.
On the debut effort, the Los Angeles-based songwriter crafts an organic portrait of herself. Teitelbaum spent years exploring her identity as an artist in the realm of pop before settling on a grunge-inspired record full of forthright observation and reflection. Blondshell is a project rooted in self-discovery, both musically and in terms of the individual growth reflected throughout the album.
Teitelbaum’s ruminations on love, loneliness, and identity capture the tumultuous nature of late adolescence. The track “Dangerous” reflects on Teitelbaum’s experience with social anxiety and how it impacted her relationships after the COVID-19 lockdown.
“A lot of this is about social anxiety. Dating and relationships are a big deal, but I think social anxiety is just as important to address,” Teitelbaum tells Consequence. “I made a lot of new friends right after COVID because of how much my life had changed, and I had this little fear, like, ‘I haven’t really socialized in a year. I’ve been in lockdown. I have social anxiety to begin with, but on top of that, I’ve been trapped in my apartment for a year.’”
The ’90s alt-rock-inspired album was also influenced by the writing of Patti Smith, Rebecca Solnit, Rachel Cusk, and Clare Sestanovich. Teitelbaum navigates the highs and lows of the album with ease, switching between a raspy chest voice and a sheer falsetto at times. Reverb-drenched guitars are layered under Teitelbaum’s vocals, cutting through the tracks with urgency. On songs like “Kiss City” and “Sober Together,” Teitelbaum strips away some of the grittiness — creating ethereal, dream-like melodies that perfectly balance the harder side of the album.
Read Teitelbaum’s Track by Track analysis of Blondshell below.
Beginning in May, Teitelbaum will embark on her first headlining tour of Europe and North America with artists Hello Mary, Girl & Girl, Platonica Erotica, and Oslo Twins performing in support. Get your tickets via StubHub, where orders are 100% guaranteed through StubHub’s FanProtect program. StubHub is a secondary market ticketing platform, and prices may be higher or lower than face value, depending on demand.
“Veronica Mars”:
Everything on the album’s very literal. All of the lyrics are real things that happened. I was obsessed with the show Veronica Mars as a kid. and I was revisiting it around the time I wrote this song. I wanted to sing about that childhood era when I was being exposed to a lot more than I was comfortable with. “Gimme Shelter” refers to the song, but I’m also saying please give me shelter from graphic TV and film, from New York City, overwhelming lyrics, etc. Some of the other songs are a lot heavier than this, but I think there’s also a lot of hope underneath these songs, even though the content is dark and difficult.
This one feels kind of hopeful to me, and it felt important to start with. With the lyric, “Logan’s a dick/ I’m learning that’s hot” — they made him seem so hot, and he was such an asshole. But I was watching it as a kid and thinking, “That’s attractive.” I think the song is just about having my boundaries crossed and the effects of those transgressions. I’m happy this song comes before any of the songs about dating in the tracklist, because when “Sepsis” comes halfway through the album, that’s the result of learning that being a dick is hot.
“Kiss City”:
I was single in COVID. I was on Hinge, I was on the apps, and I felt this pressure to just be down for everything, to be so casual. But I was absolutely not down for things to be casual. I was like, “I want to fall in love, I want to be in a committed relationship,” but I didn’t feel comfortable saying that to anybody. I wrote this song thinking, “Well, these songs aren’t going to come out anyway. So I can say the embarrassing truth, which is that I care about who I’m sleeping with and who I’m dating, and it’s not casual for me. It actually means a lot to me.”
I was learning about how to talk about my needs. I decided to just say all of them in this song, thinking nobody would hear it. And I think you can hear that musically: It’s kind of like, “Can I say this? Is this okay?” And at the end of the song, it’s like, “All right, fuck it, this is okay.” It feels so liberating to scream all of those lyrics at the end.
“Olympus”:
That was the only one that I didn’t write in my apartment. It was right before COVID. I had just gotten out of a relationship and was growing a lot, and I went to a session. I feel like this experience was an indicator that I was not a pop session girl. I was always writing about shit in sessions where people were like, “What’s happening? This is so intense.” I was in this session, and I left the room because I was like, “I need to write all these lyrics in the hallway.” Then I went back in. And I was like, “Okay, yeah, the session world is not for me.”
The song is a lot about the chaos of being 21 or 22 and not knowing who I am, so I’m trying to have fun at every single moment. It ended up not being that fun to just constantly chase excitement. This song captures the aftermath of trying to approach life that way. I was just bumbling around, and there was a relationship that came out of that era, and the song is about all of that.
“Salad”:
For “Salad,” I don’t feel the need to explain. I think everything is said clearly in the lyrics.
“Sepsis”:
This came out of wishing I didn’t feel like I needed to be validated by men. I was at that stage where I was aware of the problem, but the problem was still there. It’s not like I had gotten over my desire to be validated by guys, but I could recognize it, and I was frustrated by it. I was sick of that brand of assholes with such fake kindness.
So that’s why I was saying, “He’s a dick, but at least it’s obvious,” and it’s not one of these fake-kind guys. It was also about how, in general, it shouldn’t take as much gross behavior for me to be turned off. After one or two negative experiences with someone, I should be like, “OK, going to move on now, that’s too disrespectful.”
I think my desire for approval was probably an early-age desire that got channeled into dating as I got older. Some of the songs on this album are about women I’ve dated, some are about men. And this thing kept coming up more with men, where I was constantly seeking validation. I was like, “Why is this happening?” I was so fed up, like “I’m done with this now,” and I wrote this song. I feel like I needed the song to get there.
“Sober Together”:
That one is a friendship song. It was originally half the length. I think it’s part of the nature of sobriety that you’re going to know people that are sober, who are then not sober anymore. I wanted to write it from a place of continuing to fight the fight. I brought it to Yves and was like, “I want to do this song as a little interlude,” and he was like, “Why don’t you write a second verse?”
So it ended up being about multiple people, and relationships with other people in sobriety. I went into the song thinking, “I’m pissed,” but I ended up finding compassion through the process of writing it. I got a lot of clarity from letting compassion and anger exist at the same time. It feels like such a complicated topic to me, and the song was really therapeutic to make.
“Joiner”:
I was in a big Britpop phase when I wrote this song. There was a lot of acoustic guitar Britpop that channeled dark subject matter — drugs, all this dirty stuff — but with a fun acoustic guitar under it. I was listening to The Replacements, too. That’s what this song was inspired by sonically. I wanted the writing to feel like you’re watching HBO. I was watching Euphoria at the time. I had a lot of fun with this song, even though it’s heavy. Even when the subject matter felt fucked up, it’s still a good time.
“Tarmac”:
This one is the sister song to “Sepsis.” For me, it’s about the same type of situation: looking for validation, but whenever I try to get it, everything gets worse. Or trying to untie a knot, but it just gets tighter and tighter. This song was about the pain and anger of trying to fix something, and then it doesn’t work, and you create more of a mess. But it felt really good to sing.
I say it’s a sister song to “Sepsis” because I wrote them back-to-back and the chords are similar, but this one was really inspired by that Nirvana moment I was having. Yves show me the song “You Know You’re Right,” the last song they ever recorded. It does this thing where it gets really quiet and small and then huge and then small and then huge. That was what I wanted to have with this song. I didn’t want it to be one thing, because I was talking about a rollercoaster of emotions, where everything’s fine one second and then it blows up and then it’s fine again. It was inspired by that song and that rollercoaster.
“Dangerous”:
A lot of this is about social anxiety. Dating and relationships are a big deal, but I think social anxiety is just as important to address. I made a lot of new friends right after COVID because of how much my life had changed, and I had this little fear, like, “I haven’t really socialized in a year. I’ve been in lockdown. I have social anxiety to begin with, but on top of that, I’ve been trapped in my apartment for a year.” So I remember being like, “I want to stay in my bed and just relax, but what if my new friends forget about me?” I just said all of my irrational fears in here.
I was so tempted to have a happy ending, but I don’t even know what that would’ve meant. I think there was a happy ending with this album because I worked through so much in the writing, and these songs are so therapeutic for me to sing. I had written a lot of songs where I thought, “I have to stick to one subject in a song.” And I was like, “I’m just going to say all the things I would like to say right now and not save anything for another song or save anything for later.” If multiple things are bothering me at a time, I don’t want to have to be like, “Well, I’ll put the other thing aside for another day. I’m going to say everything.”
Blondshell Breaks Down Debut Self-Titled Album Track by Track: Exclusive
Grace Ann Natanawan
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