Review: Model/Actriz Pirouette

[FLOOD Magazine]

The NYC-based project’s second album delights in its confident sense of chaos, with vocalist Cole Haden knowing full well there’s no way we’re going to avert our gaze for a single moment.

Words: Matty Pywell

Model/Actriz
Pirouette
TRUE PANTHER
ABOVE THE CURRENT

Model/Actriz aren’t the type of band who are going to make you feel comfortable. The New York–based industrial dance-punk project has a flair for drama, and their second album Pirouette delights in neurotic energy, keeping the listener on edge while knowing full well that there’s no way we’re going to avert our gaze for a single moment. One of the hallmarks of Model/Actriz’s sound is this constant sense of propulsion found in skittering rhythms, where their instruments combine into a single percussive flow. Where their debut album Dogsbody contained a more consistent version of this, Pirouette finds greater flexibility. There’s more tension throughout the album, with the tone fluctuating between the nervous, the gothic, and the ecstatic. There are a few occasions where their alt-rock influences are nowhere to be found, as they almost veer fully into the blistering BPMs you may expect from a hyperpop record.

Pop music has provided inspiration for vocalist Cole Haden, who cites Mariah Carey and Britney Spears as influences (he also wrote a song on the new Miley Cyrus record). It goes some way to explaining how he frames himself across Pirouette, at times a one-man cabaret, a self-referential performer, and the undisputed main character of this record (“I’m such a fucking bitch,” he exaggeratedly moans on “Diva”). But this is an album of contrasts, where what’s presented may not necessarily be the whole truth. This is exemplified on lead single “Cinderella,” where Haden’s theatrical vocal delivery narrates a memory of finding himself in genuine awe of another and the comfort he feels around them. It opens him up to the point where he feels vulnerable enough to share a memory of wanting to have a Cinderella-themed birthday party when he was a kid, but changing his mind and later regretting it. It’s a psychic wound—you feel that sense of shame that he felt and its wider connotations surrounding not only Haden’s queerness, but his sense of masculinity, too.

It’s the first crack in the armor for what is a powerfully honest record, with the specificity in the way Haden writes about his experiences transporting you straight back to those moments with him. “Headlights” visits the time in which he first came out to one of his friends while simultaneously crushing on one of her friends. Often, Haden’s delivery is direct, like he’s singling you out individually in a crowd, but on this track it achieves a whole other level of closeness as any sense of a masking is left behind. On the prior track, he’d referred to himself as “trapped in the body of an operatic diva,” owning up to the role in which others see him. It makes the album a fascinating glimpse into multiple facets of Haden’s sense of self. There’s real thought put into the accentuation of every word to the point where it feels like he’s playing with us. Sometimes there’s a winking tone, as if to question listeners as to whether we know who we’re dealing with, challenging us on whether we dare to find out.

Combine this dramatized exploration of the self with Model/Actriz’s nerve-shredding noise rock that occasionally teeters into full-blown dance-floor ecstasy and it’s no wonder that the band are quickly becoming one of the most singular acts around. Their songs are disorientating, veering one way and then the next in tone. But that’s the point: You can’t pin this sound down—it needs a sense of chaos. Because after all, aren’t we all changing constantly over time?