When Model/Actriz dropped Dogsbody back in 2023, it felt like a needed pulse in the noise scene—dark songs that didn’t just screech and moan for intensity, but also the clouded emotions. It’s a tough debut album to follow up, but with this new sophomore album, Pirouette, Model/Actriz have done so with dramatic, well-calculated colours that ring a bit more accessible.
The album is still ripe with the darkened and nightmarish industrial noise the band has become known for, as well as lyricist Cole Haden’s punished and theatrical vocal delivery, but it gives much more room for Haden’s verse to really breathe. Instrumentation-wise, the guitar, bass, and drums feel like they are doing much less individual work and together crafting a mutilated and scary universe for Haden’s lyrics to cling to. The production is also expertly crisp and polished, besides the track “Ring Road,” which, on a few listens, may lean a bit too much into the industrial crashes and noise.
So many of the little vocal lines like “Vespers,” “In all the lights it’s you, you, you” are talk-sung in this catchy and sadistic manner, and as we get farther into the album, we quickly learn this record is much about queerness and reconciling with fractured memory. And while Dogsbody was in part a record about coming out as gay, it was much more vague in it’s lyricism. Pirouette is much more honest and to take a line from “Acid Rain,” “plainspoken.” Haden’s vocals burn with urgency and vulnerability, each line laced with the tension of someone stepping into the light, unsure whether they’ll be celebrated or destroyed. He doesn’t just sing about queerness—he performs it, lives it, wrestles with it in real time and the past, like in “Cinderella” or “Diva.”
Throughout the record, the music itself mimics the coming out experience: seductive yet terrifying, liberating yet disorienting. Industrial beats collide with dizzying guitar scratches, while the rhythm section pushes and pulls like a body in transformation on “Poppy.” I also love how there is this recurring, bouncy sonic guitar abrasion, which sometimes begins a song or is left in the background, giving the album a very cohesive feel. I’ve also gotta mention “Acid Rain,” once more, which is much more of a twinkly, poetic art rock piece that reminds me of an early 2000s guitar-led Radiohead. We get a bit more of this vibe on the more Nine Inch Nails-esque “Departures.”
Model/Actriz has shown they can toe the line between terrifying noise rock, raw lyricism, and catchy dance punk. While Dogsbody was a fantastic debut, Pirouette is a bit more approachable for anyone looking to dip their toes in the noise.
