One to watch: Blondshell

Growing up in Manhattan, Sabrina Teitelbaum performed under various guises at open-mic nights from an early age. But it wasn’t until she was holed up avoiding the pandemic in her new hometown of Los Angeles that she hit upon the confessional style of songwriting that would define Blondshell. As she told Dazed last month: “I started showing the songs to my friends, and everybody just responded being like, ‘Oh, now this is you as a person.’”

Musically, Teitelbaum, 25, takes many cues from the quieter end of mid-90s alt-rock and indie: there are echoes of Liz Phair, Throwing Muses, Veruca Salt, the Cranberries. It’s lyrically that she’s most exciting, however, her at times gentle delivery concealing words brimming with anger. “I’m going back to him/ I know my therapist’s pissed,” begins recent single Sepsis, before adding: “We both know he’s a dick.”

Teitelbaum doesn’t think she’d have been able to write such songs without her weekly therapy sessions. Self-examination, sometimes lacerating, informs much of her impressive forthcoming debut album. “Typically, women are given permission to be sad,” she says, “but there’s a lot of shame that gets attached to expressing anger. Unknowingly, I got in touch with that rage through the music.”