This past week, indie darling Sabrina Teitelbaum—who performs under the moniker Blondshell—kicked off her ‘If You Asked For A Tour‘ in San Diego, with the second stop being a sold-out performance at Los Angeles’ iconic Fonda Theatre—a venue that Teitelbaum has “always wanted to play.”
The tour arrived after the release of Blondshell’s sophomore album, If You Asked For A Picture, which dropped on May 2 via Partisan Records.
If You Asked For A Picture has received positive acclaim from the likes of Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, and of course, Staged Haze: writer Erin Yarnall speaks on the album’s “scream-worthy hooks, pained lyrics, and expansion onto sounds from the debut album that feel unique and unexpected,” tackling themes of complex familial dynamics, toxic relationships you just can’t seem to shake, and overall angst reminiscent of alt-artists from the early ’90s.
Despite her music being very 1990s coded, the age demographic at Blondshell’s stop in Los Angeles was certainly all over the board: with many Gen Z’ers in attendance, Millennials, and even Gen X’ers: I happened to stand near a couple in this age bracket who wasted no time getting down.
I happened to first stumble across Teitelbaum several years ago while she was releasing music under BAUM—opting for a more pop sound that garnered her an opening spot on Swedish musician Dagny‘s 2018 North American tour back in the day (yes, I was in attendance at the Chicago stop). BAUM’s music is no longer available on Spotify, but you can hear songs like “Hot Water,” “Ungodly,” and “Effortless” with a simple search on YouTube to get a full feel for Teitelbaum’s sound has transformed throughout her career thus far.
However, what has stayed the same for Blondshell is her vocal prowess: her unique tone and wide range is simultaneously classic and distinctively “Blondshell,” it’s truly a voice I can recognize singing anything. Opening with “23’s A Baby,” the third single off the album was a great choice: it’s familial enough to be easy for the crowd to know, but not necessarily a “fan favorite” (it also helps that I constantly think of this song when I watch The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives). “23’s A Baby” led into “Toy,” another song off of If You Asked For A Picture that was certainly less recognizable by the crowd (the album only came out four weeks prior to this show).
However, the large reaction to the intro of the next two songs, “Docket” and “Sepsis” were definitely crowd pleasers: the former being a popular collaboration with Bully and the ladder one of my personal favorites and one whose bridge is arguably one of the most fun to sing live.
Blondshell ultimately played 75% of the songs off If You Asked For A Picture and about 66% of the songs off her debut, and I felt overall satisfied with the split, but still disappointed that she decided to omit “Two Times,” the second single off the album and definitely one of my standouts from the entire project. She instead performed a new, unreleased song titled “Berlin TV Tower” as well as a cover of Addison Rae’s “Diet Pepsi,” a song I personally don’t vibe with but can vibe a little bit with it when Blondshell sings it—I personally love when she opts to sing the chorus lower instead of her falsetto—her lower register is incredibly powerful.
Only seeing Blondshell play once at an acoustic performance at LA’s Grammy Museum and once at Lollapalooza, I was looking forward to experiencing an “actual” Blondshell show: the preferred way to see an artist when you compare those three very different sets to each other.
Something about how Blondshell performs, including members of her band, feels incredibly organic and unforced, like they’re imagining themselves playing in their basement and just doing it because they truly love it. There aren’t any gimmicks, no unnecessary banter, just musicians doing their thing, and doing it incredibly well. An acoustic performance is fun, but it doesn’t always emulate how I think an album should truly sound after hearing its recorded version, and festivals can be tricky for a myriad of reasons, including a rough audience, bad weather, sound issues, and the pressure of getting the crowd to like you because they may have just walked by and stopped out of curiosity. In today’s attention economy, I would not want to be in an artists’ shows in that moment.
My favorite moments were of course, hearing my favorite songs, including “Sepsis,” “T&A,” “Salad,” but it was also getting to hear other songs that I may not have fully fallen in love with yet, considering the album is so very new. I have found new appreciations for those songs I haven’t fully explored, like “Thumbtack” (which is probably my current favorite), as well as the tenderness of “Event Of A Fire,” a hauntingly beautiful song about being a teenager and how you can feel so far yet so close from that version of yourself.
Despite Blondshell only releasing two albums thus far, I’m confident that she’s going to have a lengthy career ahead of her and many more projects to come and even bigger rooms to play.
The first leg of North American shows on the ‘If You Asked For A Tour‘ conclude at the end of the month before heading to Europe, then returning to the US this fall.
Photos by Enoch Chuang for Staged Haze
Great write up, I agree she’s gonna be around for a long time. I liked your summary of the audience. Two of my kids saw the Seattle show and I asked if it was mostly fan girls which I might expect from watching a lot of live videos and they said Quite the opposite lots of guys in overalls with bucket hats! We’re seeing her in Atlanta in a few weeks and looking forward to it, though I don’t expect her to play my personal favorite which was the first I heard, cartoon earthquake, which I love. Also on the new album There’s so many great songs. I love model rockets, which I don’t expect to hear live either. as you may be able to tell I’m actually a boomer and my favorite band of all time is The Smiths followed by The Cure, Depeche Mode and New Order. But I’ve added Blondshell to that list. I think she’s really talented and unique.