R&b
What better way to get to know someone than with their vulnerabilities laid bare? Blondshell’s debut record invites us to get a clear and unfiltered portrait of her life up to this point across nine explosive and liberating songs. The 25-year-old Sabrina Teitelbaum was born in New York City before moving to Los Angeles as a teenager. Her connection with both places spills into her music as they take listeners on a wild ride between tumultuous adolescence, unrequited relationships, addiction in varied forms, and queerness – all whilst remaining hopeful that life can and will get better.
In a memoir style, Blondshell uses her warm vocals amidst grunge and Britpop-inspired melodies to create an empowering, coming-of-age album that demands us to strive for better, for self-respect and self-worth. ‘Sepsis’ and ‘Kiss City’ lead this theme.
Creating her album during the pandemic, Blondshell had the time and space for introspection, allowing her to produce an exciting and bold body of work exclusively on her terms. There is humour and wit amongst the crystalline sounds too – it’s the coping mechanism we all know and love running like a thread through songs like ‘Salad’ and ‘Veronica Mars’.
Clash caught up with Sabrina to discuss her new record, creative influences, and what’s been giving her joy lately.
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How’s life been treating you the past few months, with supporting Suki Waterhouse and album promo?
Sabrina: Tour with Suki finished about three weeks ago and it was awesome. We ended in LA which was great because it just took me home. Things have been really exciting just like stoked to get more of this album out and then it’s coming out pretty soon. I think when we picked the date of April 7th, I was like that’s so far away, it’ll never happen. I was just like, it’ll be forever from now. And it has snuck up on me so I’m very excited to get the album out. I’ve had it for a long time because I wrote and recorded it in 2021 but it wasn’t mixed and mastered until the end of last year. I’ve had it for a minute and I’ve been able to sort of have my own relationship with it aside from people hearing it, which is nice.
‘Tarmac’ stood out to me lyrically, it’s so bare and vulnerable. From the lyric “I’m in love with a feeling” to the melody which has such a satisfying Britpop sound. How did that track come about?
Sabrina: ‘Tarmac’ is one of my favourites. I think it just feels so direct to me which is why I like singing it and I liked writing it, everything was so literal. All the music’s pretty literal… but that song in particular is so like here’s what it is. A lot of the songs on the album are about one specific thing or another and ‘Tarmac’ sums up what I was feeling at the time. The lyric “I’m in love with a feeling” was sort of saying, I’m writing these songs about people and not having them return the feelings, as well as chasing somebody. I had to realise that I’m actually not in love with anyone. I just like the feeling of exciting things and making new friends and then I don’t know. I also think friendship can be really complicated, especially in LA, and that’s something that definitely showed up a lot on the album for sure.
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What different media influenced you when creating this album? Any specific films or books?
Sabrina: I think it was a lot of books. I was reading a lot of memoirs at the time. In the past I didn’t want to read any memoirs because it felt annoying that somebody would dedicate an entire book to talking about themselves. But then I started reading a lot of them in the pandemic and they were important for me when I was writing the album because I realised somebody taking themselves that seriously and honouring their feelings and experiences is actually a good thing. It was something I needed a little bit of. They helped me take all of these feelings really seriously and not just be like, people have it worse or… comparative suffering. Reading a lot of these memoirs where people were talking about what they were going through, I was like, okay, I’m allowed to take the space of an album to talk about what I’m going through.
‘Sober Together’ touches on a topic that people often feel a sense of shame about. With its challenging yet life-changing effects, how important is it to discuss sobriety in your music and how has this transition impacted you as an artist?
Sabrina: The last five years just being in my early 20s, because I’m 25 now, there were a lot of things that contributed to me growing up. That transitional period is like going through emotional puberty and trying to be an adult. Musically, I really grew up because I no longer wanted to focus on things being accessible. I’m just gonna focus on how I want to say what I want to say. I think in general just getting older and getting more confident in who I am and not leaning on things like partying to feel comfortable in my skin helped me as a writer a lot. When I stopped, I was like who am I without anything? It put me in a place where I have to figure that out.
Your rendition of ‘Disappointment’ by The Cranberries is stunning. What drew you to covering it?
Sabrina: I wanted to sing something by them because Dolores O’Riordan was one of my favourite singers ever, especially her voice in the melodies she wrote. I felt like everyone already has their relationship with the hits so I didn’t want to do ‘Zombie’, ‘Linger’, or ‘Dreams’… even though I love those songs. Because I have my own relationship with those hits, I feel like when you cover something, it changes your relationship with it and I didn’t want that to happen. I liked ‘Disappointment’ a lot because I heard a lot of emotion under the surface. On the surface it’s casual, understated, light, and an airy kind of sound, but under it I was like wait, these melodies are really dark and brooding and full of heartbreak. So I chose to sing it how I hear it under that level and we kind of ended up doing this Nirvana hard cover of it.
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What song are you most proud of on the album?
Sabrina: ‘Sepsis’. It felt the most natural and it felt so good to have that song because it was something I was trying to say for so long and didn’t know how to. I wasn’t being treated the way I deserved to be. It felt really good to be like no, fuck you guys, in the melody and everything. ‘Sepsis’ is the true summary of the whole album if I had to just choose one.
Which song took longer or was most difficult to finalise?
Sabrina: I think ‘Joiner’ took the longest to get right because we went down a couple different paths for production. The reason it feels so Britpop to me is because when I imagine Britpop, I hear a happy sounding rhythmic acoustic guitar with dark lyrics about drugs and all the dirtiest parts of the culture at the time. ‘Joiner’ is like that. It’s this happy guitar with all those dark lyrics, but it took us a long time to figure out how to make those two things make sense. It came out quickly but when I tried to figure out all of the instrumentation it was a pain.
Who would you like to collaborate with?
Sabrina: Indigo De Souza! Her new album comes out on my birthday, which is the best birthday present. I love her, I love her last two albums. And this one’s kind of a cliche now because every indie bitch wants to… Alex G.
You’ve been announced for various festivals like SXSW soon and a European tour! What are you most excited for?
Sabrina: I’m excited for the European tour because there are so many places I’ve never been. I’m very excited for the U.S. tour too because I’ve never done my own tour here. I’ve supported people and been to all of these venues a million times before, so it feels special to go to these venues again and be able to play my own shows.
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What’s been giving you joy lately?
Sabrina: I’ve been trying to get better at cooking. I’m watching all these cooks, because I’m a really bad cook, like horrible, but it’s nice to work on something that I’m horrible at because I’m not trying to be perfect at it. I’m not trying to impress anybody. It’s just nice to work with food. It feels so wholesome, like I’m living my cottage life… except I’m in Hollywood. Also being with my band. On the Suki tour we bonded a lot. Just being with my band and doing fun stuff on tour.
Is it important to you to be defined by a genre?
Sabrina: I understand why people want to be put into genre boxes because it helps people decide what they’re going to listen to. There’s so much music out there that it helps to have categories, but it’s not so important to me personally. I want to have the freedom on the next album or the one after that, or whatever, not feel stuck in an alternative box. While my current music is pretty clearly in the alternative and indie rock genre, I don’t think that means it will always fit in that box.
What is one thing you hope fans and new listeners take away from your debut record?
Sabrina: I wanted to make a pretty honest and clear picture of my life at the time, which was very complicated. There was a lot of hope, but I also had a lot of hard relationships and feelings and things going on. I hope that people can see it as getting a window into somebody’s life and the most personal aspects of it. I would like for listeners to see the messiness and how complicated life can be but also the hope in it. I feel like we often only get to see small aspects of people’s lives, and I wanted to give a clear picture of someone trying to figure out who they are.
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‘Blondshell’ is out now.
Words: Sahar Ghadirian
Photo Credit: Daniel Topete
