Blondshell’s Another Picture arrives as an earnest excavation of trauma, but its introspection too often curdles into something navelgazing and whiny. Though the record aspires to channel the vivacity of ’90s alt-rock, it feels strangely sexless and airless in comparison. Like Sabrina Teitelbaum herself, the work is bicoastal, split between the emotional rigor of Fiona Apple and the sun-bleached malaise of Best Coast. Indeed, its sonic footprint is earnest alt-rock, but its lyrics flirt with the angst of early-2010s SoCal pop-punk like FIDLAR — that reluctance to grow up, that “fuck it” attitude — without any of the urgency or recklessness that made that scene feel alive. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe, however unconvincingly, this record is trying to archive the muffled cries of youth, dulled by time and therapy. If so, Another Picture hits its mark, just not one you’d ever play twice.

Framed as a companion to If You Asked for a Picture, Teitelbaum pulls in collaborators like Conor Oberst, Samia and the Folk Bitch Trio, each contributing reinterpretations of her earlier songs. The lead new track “Berlin TV Tower” signals the mood. Rather than erupting, it drifts, veering between consolation and confrontation, which aligns with the record’s overarching predicament: the attempt to convert once-raw adrenaline into something quieter.

But therein lies its rub. When Teitelbaum’s lyrical lens was sharper on tracks like “T&A” “Why don’t the good ones love me?” and “What’s Fair,” “It’s not my fault it’s who I am / When I feel bad I bring it back and leave it all at your door,” you could feel tension, bite. Here, the edge feels sanded smooth. With the collaborators and covers, the record sometimes feels less like a personal catharsis and more like a tasteful gallery exhibition, too polished and contained, much lacking in bleed-through. This is, perhaps, the central pathology of the contemporary alt-rock landscape: a genre that once indexed rebellion now functions as a mood board for tasteful disaffection. In Another Picture, Blondshell draws upon the stylistic equipage of ’90s alt-rock, but the result feels curiously sterile, even polite. Clumsy songwriting that favors literalism to poetry lends to this lack of charge.

The instrumentation is solid as always, Teitelbaum’s affinity for sludgy guitars, mid-tempo grooves and hazy harmonies remains. On “Arms (feat. Gigi Perez)”, for example, the heavy guitars of the original version are replaced by delicate acoustics and layered vocal interplay, a move lauded in press. But that shift underscores the problem. By opting for prettiness and re-interpretation, the album sacrifices some of its bite. A song about power dynamics, emotional labour and survival becomes softly spoken; the
stakes feel lowered. That said, there are moments where the emotional snapshot works. When Teitelbaum half-sings about childhood shadows and adult compromise, you sense the fatigue of someone who once screamed and now sighs. It’s evident in her voice, in how the chords hang rather than strike, in how the lines don’t always resolve.

Much of Another Picture’s conceptual scaffolding leans on the rhetoric of reclamation, that of alt-rock’s volatility, that old language of masculine-coded distorted aggression. But Teitelbaum’s execution betrays that ambition. The record gestures toward chaos only to domesticate it: guitars compressed until they lose their edge, vocals mixed so neatly they erase the friction they describe. It’s not that Teitelbaum fails to embody aggression, it’s that she treats it like a style, something to be worn rather than inhabited. While I’m conscious of how criticism from a male writer risks reinscribing the same double standards that hem women artists in, the issue here isn’t decorum but distance: Another Picture feels like it’s looking at grit through glass, curating its motifs rather than living inside them.

Another Picture is not bad. It shows Teitelbaum’s growth in acknowledging that trauma doesn’t always sound like screaming and distortion; sometimes it sounds like a sigh, a breath, a lower volume. And there’s value in that. But, if you were hoping for a of “fuck it all” energy, you’ll likely feel the absence more than the presence. Call it a snapshot of maturity, a cold acceptance.

Pre-order Another Picture by Blondshell HERE