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Born and raised in New York City, Teitelbaum moved to Los Angeles for music school in 2015. Entering USC’s Pop Program, she was swept into a context where the brooding pop legacies of Lorde and Lana Del Rey reigned. She dropped out after two years, but while there studied classic and jazz theory, and the art of harmonies, and found herself writing songs inside the world of pop studio sessions. The biggest gift the pop machine gave her was the stark clarity of realizing that she didn’t quite belong there. Her music was increasingly too raw and intense to easily categorize, and after finishing her last full-on pop EP with producer Yves Rothman (Yves Tumor, Girlpool, Porches) at the start of the pandemic, she gave herself permission to write without expectation. She began penning songs just for herself, with no thought that she would release them. The process emboldened her. Subtracting self-consciousness became a catalyst for the lucid songs of Blondshell, on which her experiences all coalesce to form her truest expressions of self yet. “It was me, as a person, in my songs,” she says. When she showed a few to Rothman, he encouraged her to write an album, joining a chorus of friends saying, “This is you.” That bracing honesty charges every note of Blondshell. With the world at a screeching halt, she recommitted to guitar and revisited the galvanic 90s alt-rock of Nirvana and Hole, absorbing their simmers and explosions, the crests and contours that made their abrasive version of pop so potent. Immersing herself into books, too—particularly the writing of Patti Smith, Rebecca Solnit, Rachel Cusk, and Clare Sestanovich—she found patience and permission. “I loved how seriously she took her own experiences,” Teitelbaum says of Solnit’s Recollections of My Nonexistence. “It helped me not trivialize the things I was going through.” For all its complicated, soul-baring subject matter—processing post-lockdown social anxiety, her relationships with men as well as with women—Blondshell is a comfort, and its songs often contain the perfectly-calibrated humor and levity we need to survive. “There were a lot of things that I was running away from—mainly loneliness, self-esteem stuff,” Teitelbaum says. It all left her yearning to make the kind of music that has helped her feel empowered herself—and the way there was in telling the truth. “I always want to make people feel like they have more power and control and peace because I know what it feels like to want that for myself. I know how music has helped me get there,” she says. “What I’ve realized I need to do is write realistically, and try to not bring shame into the writing. Each song gave me more confidence. I hope the songs help people in that way, too.” |
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| BLONDSHELL ON TOUR:
02/09/23 – Phoenix, AZ – The Crescent Ballroom* 02/10/23 – Los Angeles, CA – The Fonda Theater* 02/11/23 – Los Angeles, CA – El Rey Theater* 03/10/23 – 03/19/23 – Austin, TX – SXSW 03/22/23 – 03/26/23 – Boise, ID – Treefort Festival 05/11/23 – Brighton, UK – The Great Escape Festival 05/13/23 – Paris, France – Point Éphémère 05/14/23 – Tourcoing, France – Le Grand Mix 05/15/23 – Cologne, Germany – Helios37 05/17/23 – Berlin, Germany – Privatclub 05/18/23 – Hamburg, Germany – Molotow Skybar 05/19/23 – Amsterdam, Netherlands – London Calling Festival 05/20/23 – Brussels, Belgium – Botanique 05/24/23 – London, UK – Moth Club 05/25/23 – Manchester, UK – YES 05/26/23 – Bristol, UK – The Louisiana 05/27/23 – London, UK – Wide Awake Festival 05/30/23 – Barcelona, Spain – Primavera Festival (‘In The City’) 06/06/23 – Madrid, Spain – Primavera Festival (‘In The City’) 06/10/23 – Porto, Portugal – Primavera Porto
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