Blondshell – ‘Violins’ review: beautifully tender and profoundly honest album of alt-rock poetry
Blondshell has always weaved violence throughout her searing alt-rock. Her ’90s-inspired breakout single ‘Olympus’ started with the head-over-heels promise that Sabrina Teitelbaum would “still kill” for a toxic partner, while her self-titled debut album wrestled with daydream vengeance and potent self-destruction over explosive guitar breakdowns. Her second LP, 2025’s ‘If You Asked For A Picture’, was prettier but no less vicious as she reflected with unapologetic directness on generational anguish, body image struggles and coming-of-age uncertainty.
Coming less than 18 months later, the former NME Cover star‘s third album ‘Violins’ is as playful as it is savage. The album title is an accidental bit of wordplay (violins and violence), while the title track showcases acts of kindness turned into something darker. Instead of a reassuring hand on a shoulder, it’s “a pat on the ass”. Talk of gradual healing is dismissed as boring (“It’s like watching paint”) and there’s no biting back, as Teitelbaum tries to rise above it. “I hope heads don’t roll, they rest lightly on your shoulder”, she repeats like a mantra between celebratory guitar solos. It sets a course for ‘Violins’, an album which defiantly strikes a balance between optimistic beauty and harsh, jagged truths. Throughout, Blondshell fights to stay tender in a world that isn’t.
The cheery ‘Lucky’ flickers between moments of calm on tour and the unavoidable horrors of the news cycle, while the slow-burning ‘Knotted’ showcases complicated, messy love in all its horrible glory. There’s hard-earned joy here, too. ‘Two-Fried’ (co-written with fellow indie darling Samia) sees Teitelbaum flirt with self-love; on the dreamy ‘Sea Legs’, she rattles through a list of her favourite things like an indie rock The Sound Of Music.
After the one-two origin story of her first two records, there’s a liberated freedom to Teitelbaum’s storytelling here: less diary confessional, more conversational poetry. This turns the swaggering ‘Stone Fruit’ into an open-ended exploration of human connection, but it also makes lines such as “when I PMS, my face looks different” from the jangly indie of ‘Trojan Horse’ hit even harder. Live, those moments are going to inspire deafening singalongs.
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The record ends with ‘Fur Elise’, a gorgeous, atmospheric track that echoes Phoebe Bridgers’ otherworldly folk-rock. Here, Teitelbaum is still working out what the future looks like, but encourages people to manifest, hope and dream (“paint a wall with the things you want spoken out loud”) for their version of a brighter tomorrow, even if they don’t have everything figured out either. It ends things on a viciously uplifting note.
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