Where some artists are content to ape the sounds and styles of genres past to gain currency, the singer-songwriter behind Blondshell, Sabrina Teitelbaum, is using the brooding melodies, fuzzed guitars and bruised vocals as a means to an end.
“When I was growing up, all that stuff — like, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ was always playing,” says the Los Angeles-based Teitelbaum, in transit from Nashville to Atlanta. “I thought I knew those songs. But I didn’t connect to it, because I just hadn’t had those experiences that would make me relate to that kind of music. I revisited a lot of those albums in 2020, 2021, and I was like, ‘Oh, I get it on an emotional level.’”
Passion is a key ingredient for Blondshell. The smoldering ruins of a relationship are the foundation upon which she built her arresting nine-song debut LP. She makes a hell of an impression in just over 30 minutes — a striking evocation of the early 1990s without falling into the trap of regurgitating past glories.
It’s a searing, disarming freshman effort, and one of the best albums released thus far in 2023.
The 26-year-old Teitelbaum dabbled in music prior to Blondshell — she was releasing songs via SoundCloud just out of high school, prior to enrolling in the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music. It was at Thornton where Teitelbaum, who majored in songwriting within the school’s popular music program, gained knowledge she says was essential to her current success.
“It was really, really important for me, because there was a lot of stuff that was just really basic, fundamental stuff I didn’t know,” Teitelbaum says. “I didn’t know anything about [music] theory; I didn’t know how to sing harmonies — I wasn’t really comfortable performing on a stage. It was so immersive that I had to get comfortable with all those things really quickly. And I use all of that stuff now.”
Teitelbaum left USC and the Thornton School of Music after two years, pivoting to writing and recording under the musical moniker BAUM before shifting again, at the dawn of the COVID-19 pandemic, to writing songs as Blondshell. She’ll bring those songs to Dallas and Club Dada on Saturday as part of her inaugural U.S. headlining tour.
“I’m used to opening for people,” Teitelbaum says of the tour. “It’s definitely better than I expected, because I didn’t expect people to know the music so well.”
A hallmark of the Blondshell material — which has elicited a range of reactions in the press, from bemused to borderline irritated — is Teitelbaum’s willingness to be blunt, vulnerable and angry.
In an age when anyone with an internet connection can (and does) vent their spleen to the wider world, Teitelbaum’s finely wrought fury (“I wanna save myself, you’re part of my addiction/I just keep you in the kitchen while I burn,” she moans on “Olympus”) is aimed as much at herself as at anyone else.
That said, it’s not indiscriminate — there’s a method to her madness.
"You want to have boundaries and let people see certain sides of you, and not everything. If you’re putting out music like this, and people get to see everything — that takes some adjusting.” –Blondshell's Sabrina Teitelbaum
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“I haven’t felt like people are really surprised that I have anger,” Teitelbaum says. “I think they’re not used to seeing it in the form that I put it in. I think people aren’t really used to seeing women saying [things] about anger that way. It obviously has happened forever. There’s always been music like that. But I think it’s less common right now. It’s really popular to just be, like, sad in your songs.”
As with any artist, there’s a fine line between judiciously mining your life for inspiration and simply tearing yourself open and letting the general public gawk at absolutely everything. To hear Teitelbaum tell it, striking such a balance isn’t especially interesting to her.
“When I was making the music, I wasn’t thinking about people’s reactions," she says. "This stuff was really just for me. ... I think it would have been doing myself a disservice to be like, 'I’m just gonna keep the most intense songs private,’ even though it’s hard to put that stuff out, for sure.
“I did have some feelings about that. Not with people I don’t know, but more with family and friends and stuff like that. You want to have boundaries and let people see certain sides of you, and not everything. If you’re putting out music like this, and people get to see everything — that takes some adjusting.”
Getting comfortable with that scrutiny will be ongoing, although Teitelbaum’s headlining jaunt is nearly at its end. She’ll return to Dallas before the year is over, albeit very briefly, in a supporting capacity. Blondshell has been tapped as the opening act for Liz Phair’s forthcoming Exile in Guyville 30th anniversary tour, which stops at the Majestic Theatre on Dec. 3.
“I’m a huge fan,” Teitelbaum says of Phair. “I’m just excited, honestly, to watch her show. I’m excited to see her play and learn from what she does. I’ve always loved her music, and I think it did inspire my music and this record.”
Until then, whether on stage or on record, Blondshell can offer its listeners a kind of retro-tinged refuge, a key component of great music whether it was created three decades or three months ago. Teitelbaum’s hope is those who hear her songs feel comfort, as well as a sense of community.
“I think the stuff I was trying to think about was stuff that maybe I have felt I don’t hear people talk about enough,” she says. “And maybe, I’m like, ‘I’m the only person in the world who feels this, this much about this one thing.’ So hopefully, when people listen to it, if they feel that way, they’ll feel less alone in that.”
Blondshell plays Saturday, July 29, at Club Dada, 2720 Elm St. Tickets are $14.
