‘Violins’, the third album from Blondshell, finds Sabrina Teitelbaum digging in. Following her acclaimed 2023 self-titled debut and 2025’s ‘If You Asked For A Picture’, the 11-track ‘Violins’ trades the veil of bad romantic relationships for something braver, asking how we balance the world’s violence with its beauty across songs about troubled friendships, religion, the body, and the long, unglamorous work of healing. It’s an album of grandeur, drama, and tragedy, built on virtuoso hooks, swelling guitars, and big lead lines, pulling in fresh touchstones from Gang of Four, Teenage Fanclub, The Go-Betweens, and Sade, alongside lyrical nods to Leonard Cohen and Pavement. From the anthemic frenemy portrait of “Heart Has To Work So Hard” to the sunny, insomniac daydream of “Lucky” and the disarming closer “Fur Elise,” ‘Violins’ captures the sound of an artist who has stopped overexplaining and started rendering art on her own terms.
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, Her 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 .
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.
released September 25th, 2026
