Review Summary: Blondshell knows good songs and isn't afraid to release them
Sabrina Teitelbaum, operating under the moniker Blondshell, has returned with the difficult sophomore record. Part of the current mainstream alternative revival,
If you asked for a picture feels like a throwback to confessional guitar yearn, with a more direct contemporary lyrical and vocal approach. Teitelbaum doesn't channel the bratty obliqueness of yesteryear - it's all vulnerable wordiness until the last third.
The album opens with songs that alternate between mid-tempo pop rockers with some brighter top notes and a grounded rhythm base, or earnest ballads that open up into choruses that are reminiscent of the Indigo Girls having a long dark tea time of the soul. Centrepiece 'Events of a fire' breaks the mould with a winding guitar line and bass underpinnings that expands into a meaty mini epic, as if all the disappointments of life come spilling out in an exhausted declamation. There seems to be a drive on this album to avoid the spotlighted vocal moments of her previous record, and supplant them with well-crafted background vocal parts. It's sometimes quite beautiful and matches the more introspective tone, but does not leave space for a song with the playful, magical expansiveness of the debut's highlight 'Kiss City'.
The closing chapter of the record feels harder and darker - the final movement in 'Change' kicks up into a desperate harmony after a coiled, burning guitar choke. 'He wants me' chugs into some expected but satisfying drops before a comparatively big chorus. The song has the most noticeable dynamic shift and there's a hint of self-loathing in the vocal that gives you heart trembles.
Thematically and sonically, it's a very cohesive album. The record seems to be preoccupied with an underlying question of rationality pitted against impulse. In 'What's fair' Teitelbaum asks her mother in a moment of jarring directness - "What's a fair assessment of the job you did?". This almost absurdly clinical question is followed up with images of water and time as explanations of their fraught relationship. These seem like appeals to the normal, natural order as justification, but Teitelbaum harpoons this with the potency of choice as a refutation.
Another extension to this theme is her relationship to love and attraction - in 'Two Times' she explains the logic of loving her partner for all his good qualities, but the irrational, osmotic expectation of cruelty and conflict derails her attempts to form a meaningful bond.
If you asked for a picture feels contemporary but doesn't really try to push things forward. While one could accuse it of being predictable at times, it's also a very rewarding record and I would say there isn't a song on here that has not been stress tested in the forge of the writing process. Teitelbaum has cut the clunkier lyrical moments of the debut and there's an emotional grace buttressed by the carefully considered vocal choices and arrangements. The tradition of conventional songs still has the power to show us the perspective of another person's interior angles - I hope on the next one, Blondshell pins the quirkier moments of her debut to the rich experiential brocade of this worthy second chapter.
