Model/Actriz

When the Brooklyn quartet Model/Actriz released their debut album, Dogsbody, in early 2023, its 10 songs felt like hits and kisses. The hits came from the sound, a noise-streaked series of near-industrial wallops, where big beats pushed against guitar lines as taut as garrotes. Some of the kisses also came from that sound, a kinetic invocation of a bygone Brooklyn era when the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Rapture ruled; the rest came from the confession-studded lyrics of singer Cole Haden, who wrote about being gay with a candor and urgency that could feel like deliverance. Despite having a record deal, Model/Actriz made Dogsbody not knowing if anyone would like its caustic sonics and aggressive revelations. But it became one of that year’s true breakthroughs, adding a critical edge to the resurfacing “indie sleaze” aesthetic.

Model/Actriz grinded so hard after Dogsbody they almost ground themselves down, their famously confrontational live show causing physical and psychic injury. As they turned toward their second album, they wondered how to maintain the same energy and candor without breaking themselves. Pirouette is their response. More nuanced and delicate, with a tender acoustic ballad at its center and several songs that render noise not as an explosion but instead as a fault line, Pirouette also draws the pop-star past out of Haden, the gay Delaware kid who had an epiphany about what he wanted to become while seeing Lady Gaga. It is still a complicated record, full of emotional hits and kisses. Haden continues to reveal himself inside a band allowing itself to expand beyond expectation.