Up-and-comer Sabrina Teitelbaum, known onstage as Blondshell, has been opening for Suki Waterhouse on her “Coolest Place in the World” tour. This indie-rock new blood has been making her way onto music lovers’ playlists in recent months, even being featured on Spotify’s Fresh Finds. Like the explosive her name emulates, Blondshell’s appearance on the scene was sudden and incendiary. The first of her six singles, “Olympus,” was released on June 8th of last year. In just six months, her sound has caught the attention of many, including 

 podcast host and music enthusiast Yasi Salek, whose recommendation it was that pointed me towards Blondshell’s music. I’ve been a fan ever since.

When the clock struck 8:00 at Paradise Rock Club, Blondshell walked onstage casually and with confidence. She and her band went straight in with “Veronica Mars,” a recent release with an early-2000s pop-punk feel. Sabrina’s presence is chilled; she paces slowly back and forth, extending forwards or backwards while her voice maintains its deep cadence. She’s dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, her namesake blonde hair pulled back in a bun. Everything about her is casual, which is why I, and I’m sure many others, find her so accessible. Next up was “Cartoon Earthquake,” a more melodic tune that was released as a Spotify Single in October, and then “Sepsis,” my personal favorite single of Blondshell’s.

The lyrics in “Sepsis” are achingly honest and demanding of respect, both narratively and in the industry. Sabrina’s writing speaks volumes to her emotional vulnerability and the strength she pulls from such honesty. Sabrina found inspiration for “Sepsis” in Hole’s “Doll Parts,” another nakedly emotional anthem that confronts insecurity in romance. This candid expression extends past Blondshell’s lyricism and bleeds into her interaction with the crowd. She shares that ”Salad,” an unreleased track likely to appear on her upcoming self-titled debut album, is about “people who do very shitty things to the people you love.” This song was angstier than Blondshell’s other singles, and the lighting switched to a moodier red and chartreuse mix. Throughout this performance, Sabrina continued to stretch and sway, and even sat down slumped on stage, her voice still clear and powerful. This speaks volumes about her raw talent – performing seems effortless to her, a second nature, and I cannot wait to see more of this from her in future performances as she grows artistically.

After playing “Olympus,” Sabrina jokes that when writing it, she never expected to end up performing this song “for a thousand Suki Waterhouse fans,” to which someone in the crowd called out: “We came here for you!” Followed by more cheering, I saw this moment as an indication of Blondshell’s imminent rise to popularity this year. If people are buying tickets to shows that she’s merely opening at, tickets for a headlining show will certainly be a hot commodity.

The next song was a cover of “Disappointment” by the Cranberries, a haunting tune that played perfectly with Sabrina’s voice and indie rock sound. “Joiner” was next, the most recent release and a single off of the upcoming album. Before this song, Sabrina shared that the lyrics were an exploration of all of the intricate “in-between” feelings you could have about something that happened to you, as opposed to a strong opinion one way or another. A song about nuanced nostalgia, if you will. Then was “Kiss City,” an alt-rock tune about desire and the need to be seen as your own person in romance. Blondshell wrapped up her set with another unreleased song full of angst and longing. This performance came to a close with her lyrics intertwining with wails and yells, the words “can’t make it better” devolving into mere noises as her band played to a finish.

If Blondshell’s cool-girl characteristics don’t have you immediately sold, then her vocal performance and nuanced lyricism certainly should. Everything about her indicates a sharp rise to fame in the scene, so I suggest you hop on Sabrina’s bandwagon so you can say you were there when the Blondshell dropped.

Blondshell’s debut album is out April 7 via Partisan Records.

Bonus: check out some photos of headliner Suki Waterhouse’s performance 

Dropping a Blondshell at Paradise Rock Club

I’ve come to realize that a fan can never rely on recordings to capture an artist’s level of performance. Beabadoobee is absolutely no exception. I’ve dabbled in Bea’s music for years, many of her songs coming up on my Spotify Discover Weekly and gracing my highly curated playlists. Her soft vocals and bedroom pop style are comforting and easy to listen to, but her songs performed live are accompanied by a grinding guitar and heavy drums that completely contradict the softness of the recorded versions. I was pleasantly surprised by this sharp turn – the live sound is so much bigger than I anticipated from the more subdued tracks online.

This tour follows the July 15 release of Beabadoobee’s second studio album, 

, released on British indie label Dirty Hit. The album art is a childish masterpiece in Crayola, preparing listeners to enter a land of childlike wonder. Sonically, the music fits that theme, and we get to hear a good mix of upbeat, dreamy tunes.

In interviews, Bea has shared that this album is based off of an imaginary world she had dreamt up as a child, a place with its own language and customs that she could escape to when she felt othered by the kids at school.

All this in mind, when the Roadrunner house lights shut off and guitar feedback began whirring over the speakers, I knew that this performance would add layers to this fantasy land of an album. Bea stalks on stage in a punky, Avril Lavigne-esque outfit complete with a red plaid skirt and black shoulder-padded jacket. This demeanor contradicts the adolescence of the music she’s about to perform, and goes to show how much she’s grown as both an artist and as a person since that time of insecurity in her childhood.

Stuffed animals are strewn about the stage as they would be in a little kid’s bedroom, and Bea stands tall among them, all grown up, with a monstrosity of a pedal setup at her feet. Opening with “10:36,” we get to hear live the striking rock melodies that are dulled on the computerized track. Bea rips into her powder blue guitar, shocking everyone in the crowd, including myself, that hasn’t yet had the opportunity to see her live. Other songs follow this same pattern. “Apple Cider” and “Care” also come to life as she plays them live with a full rock sound. These tracks come off of her older albums 

, respectively. Bea played a smattering of her entire discography, but pulls mainly from 

, the latter of which expresses that punkier, harder sound that we don’t hear as distinctly on 

Bea mixes and matches, playing one or two songs off of one album then the other, meshing her older sound with a newer one that references her childhood. This makes for an interesting show, as there’s a sense of Bea growing into herself musically without losing those childhood aspects that clearly contributed so much to her artistry.

Tossing her jacket off to the back of the stage, Beabadoobee closes the show with “Talk,” my personal favorite off the newest album. The crowd is just as energized as they were from the start as Bea moves in and out of full-on guitar breaks, maturing the sound that came off far more subdued in the recording. The song swells to a finish, Bea rips off the guitar, and grabs a stuffed animal from the stage to chuck into the crowd. Her and her band stalk off with no goodbyes and the stage is dark for a beat.


The encore! Bea comes out with an acoustic guitar and speaks conversationally to the audience, sharing how deeply personal the next few songs are to her. These end up being “Coffee,” her first breakout song released in 2017, as well as “Ripples” and “Cologne.” These songs are slower and contrast the loudness of the performance up to this point. They bring the show to a calming close, and Bea’s intimate conversation brings us back to the childlike vulnerability that comes through so clearly on 

. This being Beabadoobee’s final show on tour, it seemed to be a full-circle moment for the artist. The central theme of her most recent opus was childhood, and she just performed that concept for the final time on this tour to a room of thousands, simultaneously the oldest she’s ever been and the youngest she’ll ever be. The confidence with which she captivated the Roadrunner audience proved just how far Bea has come from those feelings of insecurity she shared that inspired 

, both the dream world and subsequently the album.

Riley Flanagan