Blondshell Gets Real on If You Asked For a Picture

Sabrina Teitelbaum was hailed as something of an alt-rock revivalist when she released her first album as Blondshell in 2023, after pivoting during the pandemic from a poppier project under the name BAUM. She proves her bona fides on the follow-up, If You Asked For a Picture. But Blondshell’s second album does more than just pick up where the first one left off: The hooks are sharper and the music is livelier and more dynamic. Teitelbaum sometimes sounded tentative on Blondshell, on songs that were muted as if she felt bound by the conventions of the early-’90s alt-rock that informs her sound. She takes a gutsier approach here, making those alt-rock tropes work for her instead of the other way around.

If You Asked For a Picture is a marvel of unflinching candor as Teitelbaum dissects dysfunctional relationships and misguided choices—her own, as often as not. At their best, the dozen songs here are both muscular and stick-in-your-head catchy. She employs bold swings between loud and quiet, and even the softer songs are coiled and taut. Teitelbaum comes off as fully present, which wasn’t always the case on Blondshell, where she occasionally sounded detached. Maybe the difference is the result of all the time she has had for self-examination while on the road over the past few years touring behind her debut.

Whatever the reason, Blondshell’s second album shows that her confidence has grown by a fair margin—enough so that she can interrogate her feelings with bracing honesty on “T&A” (a title she adapted from the Rolling Stones’ “Little T&A”) as she parses a male friend’s interest in making their relationship sexual. His attraction is mostly physical, and she wonders whether she should be put off or flattered. Big, overdriven guitars open the song and fade into a verse that she sings in conversational tones, before letting her voice ring out on a churning chorus. Teitelbaum takes a similar approach on “What’s Fair,” singing with tuneful restraint on the verses as she addresses a delinquent mother before posing a lacerating question on the blustery chorus: “What’s a fair assessment of the job you did?” she sings over chugging guitar, after recounting how she grew up too fast in her mom’s absence. The quiet-loud-quiet song structure emphasizes the roiling emotions that can accompany messy parent-child relationships, but that sounds almost too clinical: the song is visceral, and Teitelbaum balances anger with disappointment and a desire to understand her mother’s perspective.