by Devin Birse (@devvvvi.b)
Model/Actriz’s debut Dogsbody presented late-night hookups as a terrifying descent into New York's after-dark sexual inferno. Its mix of poetic lyrics laden with innuendo, EBM beats, and no-wave guitar clatter led to a focused and incendiary record. But while the combination of high-tension dance grooves and rattling screech proved an excellent simulation of pleasure and terror, it left a lingering question: how would a band with a sound so distinct keep it up? The resounding answer presented by their follow-up Pirouette, confidently and beautifully.
While Dogsbody was an album of fear, Pirouette is one of desire; sometimes sexual but always personal. Where lead singer Cole Haden shrieked before, now he swoons; his voice appears perpetually reaching yet rarely grasping. What Haden is grasping at is not a lover but himself, some impossible version actualised through the vision of another. Yet that vision varies. On “Diva,” he claims to be “a small business owner living in America while trapped in the body of an operatic diva.” On the lead single “Cinderella,” an unfulfilled princess birthday party is a moment of self-discovery never attained. What’s clear is that this vision is one Haden cannot find within himself, it's one he demands from another. On the album's barest track “Headlights,” he vulnerably recalls waiting to see the glinting headlights of a boy he hoped “could see in me what I couldn’t see in myself.” It's a subject that Haden plays with lyrically, but also vocally. An ever-increasing confidence brings a gorgeous croon on “Vespers” and “Departures,” alongside a clanking Charli XCX-like sprechgesang and a few noise-rock-screams.
The rest of the band have also readjusted their sound, making the album a marked improvement over their already excellent debut. An immediate shift is heard in Jack Wetmore’s guitar, which has made a clear transition from distortion and texture to precision and percussion. Gone are the no-wave shrieks, present is minimalist, layered riffing. His loop pedal is put to phenomenal use, gradually building notes upon notes to create guitar lines that don’t move so much as flutter, chirp, and tick. On “Doves,” and “Departures,” he creates endlessly adjusting riffs that weave glimpses of melody through the rhythm section’s tight grooves. Walls-of-sound still crop up, but now with minimal distortion.
The ghostly jet engine bursts of the band's early work have been replaced by dozens of looped glittering notes that sound like steel raining down across scaffolding. This movement away from noise frees space for Aaron Shapiro’s bass to take on new forms inside and outside of a consistently excellent EBM throb, like on the industrial “Diva” or New Order-esque melodies of “Doves.” Ruben Radlauer's drums continue their industrial precision with a hefty newfound distortion. These elements unite in a manner reminiscent of the early industrial clang of Einstürzende Neubauten. Shapiro’s grooves and Haden’s croons guide the tracks, as Radlauer’s thrashings meet with Wetmore’s haywire riffing to create a sound like that of an abandoned factory collapsing in on the rave it's hosting.
These shifts allow for titanic leaps in the band's songwriting with Pirouette featuring far and away the most interesting work of their career. The band's love of pop and dance music coalesces into crystalline stompers such as the heartfelt yet rattling “Cinderella” or the twin howlers of “Vespers,” and “Departures.” The style peaks on “Poppy” where Haden’s angelic vocals weave through a titanic yet danceable industrial soundscape. On a few tracks, the band leans into the harshness of their early days. “Audience” brings back the screeched vocals and sexual terror of Dogsbody but with an added distortion from Radlauer's kick drum that verges on power electronics. This newfound source of distortion gets pushed further on the brutal “Ringroad,” which merges the brutality of first-wave industrial with the rhythms of Gabber.
The very best moments of Pirouette are when it sounds nothing like what the band has done before, like the glittery guitar ambiance of closer “Baton,” or “Acid Rain” with its lurching almost country-style rhythm and melancholic finger-picked guitar. These songs are almost Modest Mouse-esque, more than industrial experimentalist or pop, but it's a shift that works beautifully because Pirouette is an album made with remarkable vision. In the band's attempt to articulate the struggle to craft identity and self, they have crystallised their identity and sound. Model/Actriz is forging dance floor-ready tracks through a language of clashing percussion and mangled guitar looping. The songs that spring out of their vision are shimmering, Gaga-style little monsters made of steel wires and broken glass that move and sing with effortless beauty.