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t’s only been a year since Blondshell released her second album If You Asked for a Picture, but Sabrina Teitelbaum is already following that up with the excellent Violins, proving she’s a prolific, unstoppable force in indie rock — and she’s just getting started. The record, out Sept. 25 via Partisan, shows her juxtaposing beauty and horror. “I hope heads don’t roll,” she sings in the gut-punch of an opening title track. “They rest lightly on your shoulder.”
“How do I make sense of all of the violence that we’re seeing every day with my personal life getting better, and noticing more beauty, and feeling more patience and more stability?” she tells Rolling Stone. “I’m also not religious, and that’s the exact kind of question that religion is supposed to help you out with. So I spent some time this year trying to make sense of all that, and I think that was the point of the music for me.”
In the new episode of the Rolling Stone Studio, Teitelbaum goes deep on Violins with senior writer Angie Martoccio and associate director of social media Leah Lu. Here are some highlights from the discussion.
She Didn’t Plan on Releasing a New Album This Quickly
Teitelbaum says that initially, she wasn’t planning on following up If You Asked for a Picture so soon: “I don’t feel like I even knew that I was starting to make an album.”
“I had just put the second record out,” she continues. “So I was like, ‘Great, I have all the time in the world. Everything that I make now is just for me. I’m not even going to put it out.’ And I always think that’s the time where I write the most. So I didn’t even realize that it was going to be a record.” But that changed once she wrote the title track to Violins: “I was like, ‘OK, this is an album now,’” she says.
She’s Not One to Hold Completed Songs
“I really hate sitting on songs and not doing anything with them,” Teitelbaum says. “I think I have a subconscious fear that they’ll go away or something, or I’ll lose the excitement around the song. So every time I write, I’m like, ‘I need to go record this really fast. I don’t want to just have a bank of songs.’ So we just got on it, and made the record.”
She Has a Wedding Playlist
And no, she’s not planning a wedding right now. “I’m not engaged,” Teitelbaum says. “I’m not getting married or anything. [But] I have a playlist that I’ve made of songs that I would like to play at my wedding.” Those songs — which Teitelbaum specifies were compiled for the wedding weekend, and not necessarily her walk down the aisle — include Aphex Twin’s “Windowlicker” and “Like Eating Glass” by Bloc Party. “I want the 2010 vibes at my wedding,” she explains. “Because I think, in my heart, I live on Tumblr forever. It has to feel a little bit like [Kaya Scodelario’s Skins character] Effy Stonem at the wedding. I can’t feel like, ‘I’m getting married and giving up the Effy Stonem of it all.’”
‘Lucky’ Is Sarcastic
On the album highlight “Lucky,” Teitelbaum sings “I’m lucky I got lucky/I feel beautiful and rested” on the killer chorus. But in true Teitelbaum fashion, she doesn’t mean that literally. “When I wrote it, I was very under-slept, and I didn’t actually mean it,” she says. “The reason I didn’t put that song out as a single is because I felt like people will hear it as genuine, they won’t hear it as sarcastic. So there was a minute where I felt like, ‘I don’t want to be misunderstood. I don’t want everyone to think that I’m saying that I feel beautiful and rested all the time,’ because I do not.” However, she knows the lines will make for a momentous live moment, where fans can shout the words. “Now looking back, and feeling the way that I feel in this moment, it is nice to be able to perform a song that’s like, ‘I feel beautiful and rested. I feel lucky,’” she says.
She Won’t Make a Deluxe Edition of Violins
As opposed to her first two records, Teitelbaum confirms she won’t release a deluxe edition of Violins. “I feel like I’ve done it now a couple times,” she says. “And I want to let the record stand on its own, not follow it up instantly.”
She Opens Up About Her Sobriety
December will mark seven years of sobriety for Teitelbaum, but she says it doesn’t feel “as defining” as it used to. “I think my life felt, at one point, defined by partying, and the friendships that I had partying,” she explains. “The version of myself I felt like I could be when I was fucked up felt like, ‘That’s the right me. That’s who I am. I’m confident in that version of me.’ And then I felt like, for a while, my life was kind of defined by the absence of that, in a way I didn’t like. I felt really kind of wholesome for a while. It was like, ‘How do I find myself without that?’ which I guess is kind of the whole thing that people talk about. And I don’t know. It feels less defining now — just as important for me, personally, but less defining.”
She’s No Longer a Vegan
After years of veganism, Teitelbaum admits she had to start eating meat out of necessity. “I need the protein,” she says. “I was getting so tired. Thank you for not judging me. I can’t eat meat, because it grosses me out. But if it’s hidden, if it’s in a meat sauce, maybe once a month, I can try to eat it. I need the iron. I eat a lot of fish, though.”
She Wants to Cry On Stage
Teitelbaum is a huge fan of Mitski and her stage presence — particularly how she can cry onstage. “It is a big goal of mine to let the walls down enough that I can perform, and actually cry on stage, because of watching Mitski,” she says. When she does, she knows it might be while she’s performing a cover. “Every time that I have almost cried on stage, it’s been a cover,” she says. “I don’t know why. I think when it’s your music, you’re so deep in the process of making it, and recording it, and all that stuff. And when it’s a cover, you just kind of pick it up that night, and you have your whole life’s relationship with it.”
She Loves Nostalgia
During a round of fuck, marry, kill, Teitelbaum chose to kill the passage of time, fuck nostalgia, and marry the moment. “I hate the passage of time,” she says. “It’s devastating. Every heartbreak is because of the passage of time in one way or another, I think. That’s kind of the worst thing ever. We strive to love the moment. [And] I think it’s become very trendy to hate nostalgia. love it. There’s a lot of music that I listen to because I want to feel nostalgic. That’s why I listen to New Order.” And how does she feel about her choices? “I do think I ate with that answer.”
