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Two years after her searing self-titled debut, Blondshell will return with the new album If You Asked For A Picture, out May 2 via Partisan Records.
The 12-song track list contains the previously-released “What’s Fair” and the new single “T&A,” out today. In the video below, Blondshell’s Sabrina Teitelbaum appears with adorable rescue dogs (and some not-so-adorable dudes) as she basks in burning alt-rock grandeur, singing, “I said if you stop drinking maybe I could find you attractive/Maybe I could let you have it/And it happened.”
“There’s a Rolling Stones song on Tattoo You called ‘Little T&A’ and at one point in the song, he says ‘tits and ass,’ so I’m borrowing that,” Teitelbaum said in a statement. “I think in music, it’s easy to see things as either more sexualized or more romantic, and I wanted this to be both. I see it as a love story — maybe not the most fairy tale love story — but I wanted it to feel like a really narrative song, where one thing leads to another and then you end up somewhere you didn’t expect. Normally that’s not how I write, but I wanted a song like that.”
Reflecting on her self-titled debut, Teitelbaum thinks of her 2023 record as more clear-cut than If You Asked For A Picture. “The first record feels really black-and-white to me,” she said. “This record has more questions.” Some of those questions arrived while Teitelbaum relentlessly toured in support of her debut, performing over 150 shows that included a trek with Liz Phair, headlining shows, and festivals.
“When you travel a lot, you see different possibilities for who you can be,” she observed. “So there were a lot more questions coming up. What do I want my life to look like? Maybe it’s just the nature of being two years older, but I’m more comfortable with nuance now, and I’m more comfortable with gray areas.”
Teitelbaum, a longtime fan of Nineties rock, says she listened to Queens of the Stone Age’s Rated R (1999) and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Californication (2000) while making the new album (like her debut, the new record was produced by Yves Rothman). “It’s empowering for me to use sonic references that feel reserved for men,” she noted.
The title If You Asked For A Picture derives from a line in Mary Oliver’s 1986 poem “Dogfish”: “If you asked for a picture I would have to draw a smile/Under the perfectly round eyes and above the chin/Which was rough/As a thousand sharpened nails.”
“There’s a part of the poem that says: ‘I don’t need to tell you everything I’ve been through. It’s just another story of somebody trying to survive,’” Teitelbaum said. “Something I love about songs is that you’re showing a snapshot of a person or a relationship, and showing a glimpse into a story can be just as important as trying to capture the entire thing. Sometimes it’s even truer to the entire picture than if you tried to write everything down.”
This morning, Teitelbaum added a note to fans: “It feels impossible to think of anything other than the fires in Los Angeles right now. The city I’ve lived in for ten years is burning and the scale of the loss is incomprehensible. In a way it feels dumb to talk about music, but I also think the whole point of art is for it to exist in the context of pain as a small emotional respite… even if just for one moment.”
She also shared resources including a mutual aid fund, a dog fostering signup, and a fundraiser for the L.A. fire department. “Please stay safe,” she added. “Thank you for letting me share this with you. 12 songs about searching for love, family and friendship in many right and wrong places.”
If You Asked For A Picture Track List
1. Thumbtack
2. T&A
3. Arms
4. What’s Fair
5. Two Times
6. Event Of A Fire
7. 23’s A Baby
8. Change
9. Toy
10. He Wants Me
11. Man
12. Model Rockets
