Model/Actriz Brings Some Noise to Queer Pop on ‘Pirouette’
The band’s new direction lines up neatly with its most directly queer lyrics to date, but 'Pirouette' occasionally falls flat.
WHY YOU KNOW THEM: You go to rock shows in Brooklyn, you like noise rock, or you pay attention to emerging queer musicians across all genres
WHAT’S THE VIBE: Shuffling, synthetic, occasionally noisy
START HERE BUT ALSO KEEP READING: “Cinderella,” “Departures,” “Diva”
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On the Brooklyn band Model/Actriz’s mega-hyped debut album, 2023’s Dogsbody, frontperson Cole Haden was a wellspring of horniness and queerness surrounded by the kind of music that almost never evokes queerness. Gnashing guitars, harsh percussion, and claustrophobic grooves surrounded him as he, among other things, sought a man to grind him into a pearl and referenced Lady Gaga and (sigh) Gwen Stefani under his breath. On Pirouette, Model/Actriz’s sophomore album released last Friday, the band ditches Dogsbody’s thrashing for more melodic production, actual singing from Haden, and percussive patterns and textures pulled from pop radio. At its best, the LP makes a case for adding some occasional noise — Model/Actriz’s signature piercing guitar harmonics and shuffling, muffled plucking — to the queer pop canon, and Haden’s lyrics about formative childhood moments and non-formative adulthood encounters reach new levels of directness. At its worst, the music feels uncommitted to either sound and drifts into sterility.
Listening to Haden feels like going on a first date with someone whose forthrightness and capacity for sharing their queerness and stories makes you feel at ease instead of overwhelmed. On “Diva,” Haden’s mumbled musings about a gay guy who has a girlfriend and his request that you imagine him “absolutely soaked, dripping head to toe in Prada Sport” soar over his band’s bass-heavy rumble and float atop the melodic chorus. When he whispers “I saw him on the platform / Waiting at Dekalb / He stood there casually radiant / I was basking by the wall” over the tense romantic throb of highlight “Departures,” it’s a much more alluring version of a queer person recounting their recent escapades than you get in everyday conversation.
Haden’s leveled-up fearlessness in being queer on record is best exemplified by “Headlights,” more of a spoken word number than a song. He talks about coming out for the first time in eighth grade and recounts one of his formative childhood crushes, exploring the way that youthful, immature infatuation grounded in stigma and fear often both leads to and stems from intensely negative feelings. Its quietude builds intimacy previously absent in Model/Actriz’s work, a thread that continues into the next track, “Acid Rain,” which is just not a good song.
Sure, it takes serious guts and self-assuredness to be a not-so-skilled singer, be in a band associated with dissonance and overwhelm, and go for an In Rainbows-style acoustic ballad like “Acid Rain.” (Even though Radiohead are likely Zionists, I keep coming back to this comparison; there’s just no better one.) However, Haden is nowhere close to talented enough of a singer to carry this tune. Although “Acid Rain” is a clear indicator that Model/Actriz’s goal on Pirouette is to close the gap that noise and thrashing can place between a musical act and its audience, this song fails to achieve this outcome, as does closing ballad “Baton.”
On “Cinderella,” on the other hand, well — mission accomplished. Full of warm blood and lip-biting libido even before Haden’s voice comes in, “Cinderella” is tense, scary, and sexy all at once, with digital kicks and shrill yet sunlit guitar thwacking the song’s way to a tearjerking climax. After two minutes of Haden describing the romantic and emotional connection he’s rapidly growing with the song’s subject, he gets to a point where he trusts this person enough to completely let his guard down, and that’s always a beautiful feeling. He mutters all the below as the music peaks in intensity, sounding like he’s on the verge of breaking down:
Okay I'll share this
When I was five, I remember clearly
My want to have a Cinderella birthday party
And when the moment came and I changed my mind
I was quiet, alone, and devastated
What a gut-wrenching thing to experience, what a devastating way to relay it, and what a universal experience for queer people in our youth. Who among us didn’t, at some point in early childhood, desire something more often associated with the opposite assumed gender — think of the little boy who wants a Barbie or likes wearing his femme family members’ clothes — then have that wish yanked away from them by an authority figure or, just as grimly, by succumbing to one’s own innate but not-yet-articulable sense that expressing ourselves would put us in danger?
These are the kind of revelations that I don’t find in the pop music that Haden and I both love (and seriously, he loves Lady Gaga. Born This Way being his favorite album? Taste!). No wonder, then, that he’s inching Model/Actriz toward making exactly this kind of pop music. Pirouette is distinctly not noisy for the most part, placing it beyond the confines of what Model/Actriz fans liked about Dogsbody. Sure, “Ring Road,” a track I love, is the most violent Model/Actriz song to date, but the album is in the sphere of queer pop music precisely because the band has made the striking move of sanding off its edges. Pirouette may be imperfect, but if Haden knows one thing, it’s that taking the leap is itself an act of bravery.
Please read this article. The current presidential administration is looking into sending U.S. citizens to prisons in El Salvador that are generally understood to be torture camps. This is analogous to Nazi Germany, as are many actions over the last 10 years of U.S. presidential administrations and Congressional politics; when I walked along the thousands-feet-long timeline of Nazi Germany that’s on display outdoors at Berlin, Germany’s Holocaust museum, it mapped near-perfectly onto said period. We are in danger. What will you do to help the people take back their power?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Max Freedman launched the LGBTQ+ music newsletter Lavender Sound in January 2025 to create an online writing community by and for LGBTQ+ people about LGBTQ+ music. They also interview artists for The Creative Independent, which is their favorite website (they really want you to read theirJaboukie Young-White interview), and they’ve previously contributed music criticism to Pitchfork, Bandcamp Daily, and Paste. Their pronouns are whatever float your boat ⛴️💜