When executed correctly, a pirouette in ballet is somehow both graceful and powerful, delicate and muscular. So it isn’t hard to understand why the band Model/Actriz used it for the title of their second album, out today. Every one of the 11 tracks is a thrilling exercise in controlled chaos: the pummeling kick drum and relentless forward motion of a silvery guitar on opening track “Vespers,” the clattering percussion and preening lyrics of “Diva,” the whirling electric fuzz and meticulously calibrated call-and-response of “Departures.” And just like watching a prima ballerina fly into a high-stakes pirouette and stick the landing, the effect is dazzling.
Lead singer Cole Haden—whose electric stage presence and lyrics probing the nuances of queer life have helped establish the band as an unmissable live act—first met his fellow bandmates, drummer Ruben Radlauer and guitarist Jack Wetmore, while studying at the Berklee College of Music in 2016, and after a two-year hiatus, they regrouped in 2019 with the addition of bassist Aaron Shapiro. In 2023, they released their debut album, Dogsbody—an explosive, eardrum-blasting sonic cocktail of punky, dancey noise rock—before steadily building their fanbase through nearly two years of touring. With Pirouette, it feels like the band is finally poised to hit the big leagues.
The album also marks a subtle sonic pivot, as the band leans further into their pop instincts and Haden’s knack for a cheeky, winking lyric. (“I’m such a fucking bitch, girl, you don’t even know / Just imagine me absolutely soaked, dripping head to toe in Prada Sport,” he growls, with delectable disdain, on “Diva.”) The lead single “Cinderella”—which came accompanied by a video relocating the titular fairytale to contemporary Brooklyn, the ball substituted for a queer rave, and three of the bandmates dressed up as Ugly Stepsisters—served as something of a mission statement for Model/Actriz’s new era, blending their signature raucous sound with irresistible pop hooks (Haden cited, somewhat surprisingly, Janet Jackson and Kylie Minogue as inspirations) and lyrics suggesting a newfound candor around the subjects of sex, shame, and the soul. “With the instrumentation and our style, it would be hard, I think, to really recognize that Kylie played as much of a role on the record as she did,” says Haden. “But I was just listening to music that I grew up with, and things that made me feel sentimental and tender, because I knew that I wanted the music to be very vulnerable and personal to me.”
So too did their hectic Dogsbody touring schedule—and the way in which they saw the (unusually broad) demographics of their fans evolve along the way—help inform the direction they wanted to take this time around. “I think the shows emotionally had outgrown the dark themes of the earlier stuff, and began to feel a lot more fun and inclusive and like a party,” says Wetmore. “I think we just wanted to make recorded music that matched that energy.” The product of that roiling energy makes for some of the most exciting, genre-bending music you’ll hear all year. There may be whispers of artists past and present throughout the record—a touch of Nine Inch Nails on “Diva,” a dash of Radiohead on “Acid Rain,” an air of David Bowie in the vocals on “Cinderella”—but it’s all whirled up in a blender to concoct a sound that is uniquely, unmistakably Model/Actriz.
Here, the band tells Vogue about the challenges of heading in a new sonic direction, the playful visual world surrounding the album, and the surprises they’re keeping up their sleeve to keep the Pirouette party going while they head out on tour this summer.
Vogue: Your first record came out just over two years ago, and since then, you’ve had a pretty intense touring schedule. This album has a very different feel to Dogsbody—how did you carve out the time or the space to establish what you wanted to do with Pirouette?
Aaron Shapiro: We did a trip to Nashville where we baked in a week as the first real writing trip, and that ended up laying the foundation for what we wanted. What did Cole want to express? How did we want to move on from what we had been writing previously? I think we got the first song out of that trip, which is “Vespers,” and then it was a long time before we really wrote anything else, but that was the earliest memory I have of being fully in the Pirouette world.
Cole Haden: Although what Aaron didn’t mention there is that the writing trip to Nashville was actually while we were on tour for Dogsbody. [Laughs.] So we definitely had a foot in both worlds—writing the new material, and then going and playing a show of completely different material.
Shapiro: Yeah. I guess that speaks to the challenge of trying to write something that felt real and pure while constantly being dragged in different directions. We had to be really committed to that sense of discovery and coming back to that place.
There’s definitely a stronger directness and candor to the songs this time around; some of them, like “Cinderella,” are even addressed to a childhood self. What was some of the new terrain you were looking to explore lyrically, Cole?
Haden: I think there was a lot of room for interpretation with the lyrics on Dogsbody, and one of my biggest fears or anxieties is being misunderstood and misinterpreted. I am proud of that writing, but I knew that I needed to, for my own sake, be more transparent about what the songs were about. It really was a direct response to Dogsbody. I think the record is basically what I learned from the first album, because those were most of the new experiences that I was getting in those two years—and a lot of those that related to the vision of what I saw for myself as a kid. I’m both speaking to me as a child, and thinking about the kind of person I am now. What would my younger self think of that person?
Where did the title Pirouette come from? It captures the energy of the record so brilliantly.
Haden: What drew me to the word was that dichotomy of being on the verge of falling out of balance, but needing an incredible amount of skill to maintain your posture, like a ballerina. There’s something both delicate and athletic about it, which is our process of making things.
Having worked together as a band for so many years now, do you feel that sense of being in sync, almost like a dance ensemble? Listening to the record and seeing how you perform, it appears that way…
Shapiro: When it’s working, for sure. Nothing’s ever perfect, though, and we’re not necessarily striving for something perfect. But I do think there’s a common theme of elegant machinery or something that comes in. It sounds like a hot, dancing robot.
Jack Wetmore: I think there’s a delicateness to the word pirouette that doesn’t give away the athleticism and coordination behind it. And I think we’ve constantly been trying to bring a delicateness and beauty to heavy music, so the word pirouette feels like the thesis in a lot of ways.
Shapiro: It’s funny, too—I think it was a title that was on the cutting room floor for the last album. We were like, “Oh, that’s a great word and it really speaks to what we do as a band,” but it just wasn’t right for the last one. It was one of the first ones that was brought up for this and it just stuck around.
Tell me a little more about the visual world you wanted to build around the album—it feels a lot more ambitious this time around. What was the story behind the “Cinderella” video, and what was it like to film?
Haden: Our friend Nathan [Castiel], who’s done most of our videos, felt like the obvious person to go with because we knew we wanted to take it in a narrative direction. Although at first, it didn’t occur to me that we would do something like a retelling of the story of Cinderella. I wanted to include choreography in it, so we got our friend Kevin Zambrano to do it. I knew that I wanted to take a lot of the tropes from higher-budget pop videos to form the foundation of a video for a much less immediately accessible song, but one that is still catchy. I think to include those elements in our world and the scene of heavy music is… not groundbreaking, but renegade maybe. And I think it’s important to have that conviction in making sure that the queer themes in my lyrics and in my identity are at the forefront of at least the performance, and that they’re able to be perceived on camera, because I think it’s still rare to see someone embracing that as the frontman of a band.
It’s also refreshing to see a band in that space doing something with a wink and a sense of humor.
Haden: Totally. I think it’s political, in a sense, even if it’s not political music. It existing is political by nature. But it was also just fun. It was very meaningful to me to be able to have the party that I always wanted, but it was also a rollicking good time. Maddie, who plays the Fairy Godmother, is one of my best friends, and Matt, who plays Prince Charming, is one of my best friends, so just being silly with them for two days was partly the point.
You have quite a formidable reputation as a live act. What do you have up your sleeve for the Pirouette shows and the tour? Do you ever feel like there’s pressure to up the ante because of that reputation?
Shapiro: I think if it got to a point where it was about trying to meet someone’s expectations, it would probably stop feeling good, because it wouldn’t feel genuine. There were definitely points on tour the past couple of years where we were starting to get this sense from people that they’re expecting some crazy shit, so then you go into it like, Well, fuck it, I’m not going to do anything. I’m just going to chill. But I also think it’s very natural for the three of us playing instruments to be a little dramatic and get caught up in it. There have definitely been times where we’re like, Oh, I just don t have it tonight. I’m just going to try to play well, but I’m not going to do any craziness, and then you step off-stage and you’re like, Damn. why did I do that shit? I just acted a fool. [Laughs.] We’re having fun, but we really care about it, too.
Ruben Radlauer: I feel like at the beginning of the Dogsbody touring, we got caught up in an internal arms race of upping the ante to the point where, like, Jack was throwing his guitar up in the air and I was throwing around drums, and it just got really old really quick. But we definitely will be upping the ante… in ways yet unseen.
How do you handle the intensity of your touring schedule? Are you going to do things differently this time to make sure you’re not burning yourselves out?
Haden: Well, we purposely decided to find out where our burnout point was during Dogsbody. And when we reached that point, we had a half a year left of shows to play. [Laughs.] But we found it, which is great. So now I know how many shows in a row I can play before I can’t sing anymore.
Shapiro: I think now, as the schedule comes in and offers come in and whatnot, we’re structuring things from a more informed perspective of, “Are we actually going to want to do this the day before? Or do we just want to do this now?”
Haden: Sometimes we’ll have a schedule set, and then someone will see the poster and they’ll see that we have a day off. Then they do the evil thing of making us an offer on our day off, and this place becomes Brigadoon. We’ll no longer exist if we don’t take the offer to go there on this day, and then we play seven shows in a row and shoot ourselves in the foot. But now we know to not be tempted by the temptress…unless the offer is something we can’t refuse.
Radlauer: I think one of the things that burned us out the most was also just not having new music to play. I think realizing for ourselves we need to keep that rotation going keeps everything fresh and inspiring, even when we’re wiped out.
Haden: I saw a tweet from someone in Chicago being like, “Going to see them for the sixth time tonight. I could watch the same show for the sixth time, but I hope they have some new music tonight.” We would be touring through a city for the third time and we didn’t have anything even finished yet to play. It started feeling a little scammy.
Radlauer: You can only eat the same meal so many times in a row.
What can you tell me about the new elements of the show this time around? The guy who’s seen you six times in a row—what is he going to be surprised by?
Haden: I will be doing costumes. This run is about ushering the people into the new world, so expect some wardrobe surprises.
Will the rest of you guys be getting out the Ugly Stepsister costumes from the “Cinderella” video again?
Shapiro: That’s a secret!
Wetmore: I actually can’t drum in a skirt.
Haden:: Well, not that skirt.
Wetmore: Okay, well you can find me a different skirt then. Stay tuned.
