Blondshell announces new album out 02/05 | LIVE

Blondshell (Sabrina Teitelbaum) has announced the release of her highly anticipated sophomore album, If You Asked For A Picture — out on May 2nd, via Partisan Records. Returning to the studio with producer Yves Rothman, the project brims with an urgency, ambition, and devastating potency hinted at on Blondshell’s 2023 self-titled debut, the specificity, self-examination, and nonchalant humor of which turned her into one of the most lauded new artists in recent memory.

If You Asked For A Picture’s title borrows its title from a 1986 poem by the cherished American writer Mary Oliver, titled “Dogfish.” In it, 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 the forthcoming LP.

"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. 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."

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."

Fans can get a taste of the new album in the form of the crushingly catchy accidental love story T&A — the video for which was directed by Hannah Bon and features three rescue dogs (Luna, Rooster, and Radar) matched with male counterparts. It’s a nuanced take on the “men are like dogs” adage and an exploration of the idea that the dogs with the loudest barks are the ones that are the most afraid, exposing a vulnerability deep within the surface of a tough exterior.

Pre-order the album here.

Listen/share T&A here.

About the track: "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. 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."

Teitelbaum previously shared another album track What’s Fair, which Billboard said "fulfills the Blondshell promise and even evolves it to a new level of excellence" and Rolling Stone called a "cathartic rocker ... sonically harks back to Nineties alt-rock and SoCal pop punk, with a sunny melody masking darker lyrics."