Blondshell Tickets

The second album from Sabrina Teitelbaum, aka Blondshell, borrows its title from a 1986 poem by the cherished American writer Mary Oliver, titled ‘Dogfish’. In the poem, Oliver grapples with the idea of telling one’s own story: how much to share, how much to keep for oneself — all questions Teitelbaum asked herself while writing ‘If You Asked For A Picture’. “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 says. “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.”

Blondshell’s self-titled 2023 debut unleashed a swiss-army-knife writing style that gets under your skin: songs that are as visceral and anthemic as pop music with all the specificity, self-examination, and nonchalant humor of the best indie rock — songs you want to let crash over you, even as their strength is too concrete to be washed away. It’s a formula that turned Blondshell into one of the most lauded new artists in recent memory. ‘If You Asked For A Picture’ expands these artistic horizons further, resulting in a collection of songs from an artist now at the peak of her powers that brim with an urgency, ambition, and devastating potency only hinted at until now.

‘If You Asked For A Picture’ is alive with a more vital nuance both sonically and thematically, gesturing towards a deeper autobiographical story that taps into something painfully universal without being too overt. Teitelbaum explains, “The first record feels really black-and-white to me. This record has more questions.” The lucid songs of ‘If You Asked For A Picture’ dig into familial relationships — parents who pass on their trauma (as in “23’s A Baby”), the endless two-way critique between mothers and daughters (the alt-rock daydream “What’s Fair”), and the loyalty of a sister who won’t forget how a man wronged you (the crushingly catchy accidental-love story “T&A”). Teitelbaum acknowledges her inherent imperfections while trying to extend compassion for the flaws in others. “The last record was a lot of, ‘You’re the villain in this situation, you’ve wronged me, and I’m really pissed’” she says. “On this record it was more like: ‘How did I get here? Maybe I’m the villain too.’ There was something freeing in that.” A major theme of ‘If You Asked For A Picture’ is control — and the possibility of loosening her grip on it — including two songs (“Thumbtack,” “Toy”) that touch on Teitelbaum’s lifelong struggle with OCD.