On her second record as Blondshell, L.A.-based musician Sabrina Teitelbaum serves up a melancholic reflection on pain, longing, and the perils of having been a 16-year-old girl. If You Asked For a Picture follows Blondshell's 2023 self-titled debut, and the album marks a reunion between Teitelbaum and producer Yves Rothman (Girlpool, girl in red, Courtney Love, Kim Gordon). With this new release, Teitelbaum is taking a softer approach to the guitar-driven sound she established two years ago.
The sepia highlights and blue shadows of Teitelbaum's photo on the album cover — as she lays on stomach with her chin resting on folded hands — evoke the same nostalgic haze that permeates her music. Teitelbaum's pose and stoic expression model a fitting way for her listeners to approach the album: with tracks like "Thumbtack," "Change," and "Event of a Fire," If You Asked for a Picture crafts a bittersweet mood to space out to.
The album is full of sonically gentle but emotionally cutting indie rock à la Phoebe Bridgers, Samia and Indigo De Souza, while also referencing the classic alternative rock of the '90s and early 2000s. "What's Fair" is the truest embodiment of this grungy late-'90s vibe, its incredibly catchy chorus masking downtrodden lyrics about a complicated parent–child relationship. While Teitelbaum's vocals occasionally teeter on nonchalance or disaffection, she knows how to balance these quieter moments with bursts of passion, making them strike even harder.
Part of the singer-songwriter's magnetic pull is the self-awareness in her lyrics, like when she croons about a masochistic tendency to stick around in imploding relationships on "Thumbtack." Her willingness to vulnerably open a wound with each track and release her pain through the album's sombre arrangements make If You Asked For a Picture feel like catharsis, as though Teitelbaum is ready to close the shaky chapter of her mid-20s and face what comes next with a clean slate.