Model/Actriz

In the organizer's words:

Presented by Rausgegangen Munich

As their name suggests, Model/Actriz seek to channel raw emotion into impressive new forms. The band's superficial glamor is backed by nerves of steel, transforming their concentration into moments of wild abandon. With Model/Actriz's songs carried by a frantic guitar, relentless drums and pounding bass, it's to be expected that their primary purpose is to be shit-starters. But behind their instrumental muscle lies a searching heart, and the Brooklyn quartet has long made it their mission to reconcile indefinable feelings by forging a wild new path through sound, one that brings jagged emotions back into full harmony with listeners' bodies.
Their debut album Dogsbody was sexy, dark and dank, full of eerie passages and veiled menace. Songs like "Amaranth" and "Mosquito" were hot-house scenes in the penumbra of foreboding, with frontman Cole Haden as the hero at the center of the shifting, sultry gloom. The figure he cut was reassuring and menacing, both a seasoned leader who could illuminate the music's murky corridors and a haunting presence that was inseparable from them. In the lyrics, he found himself in the darkness and became the person he is today - scarred but strengthened by the seduction of music.

Model/Actriz's second album Pirouette, co-produced and mixed by Seth Manchester and mastered by Matt Colton, who also worked on Dogsbody, steps out of the labyrinth and straight into the spotlight. It's the equally successful but much more confident sister album to Dogsbody - vibrant and immediate rather than dark and obscure. The light it radiates comes from within and reflects a band that has not only grown from its strengths, but has also conquered its demons. Haden no longer performs from the shadows, but is at the very front of the stage - and often in the middle of the crowd - commanding the chaotic center of the music with a composure reminiscent of Grace Jones and Lady Gaga.

After much critical acclaim and an extensive tour in support of the album, the band wanted to reinvigorate their live shows, which invite the audience into a shared space of carnal ritual. Pirouette is both a natural progression and a calculated reboot, a step towards reasserting their artistic prowess by stripping away the smoke and mirrors to become brighter, harder and more direct. The pop thread that runs throughout the album allows the audience to experience the pounding club music in the spirit of cabaret and manifest the catharsis that comes with hitting the dance floor.

The word "pirouette" literally dances on the tongue, and few lyricists ingratiate themselves with the flavor of words as skillfully as Haden. "Like 'matinee' or 'seraglio'," he pouts in "Departures", "all I want is to be beautiful". The beauty Haden craves on Pirouette is the kind of beauty that's forbidden until you give yourself permission to indulge in it, and even then it's a pleasure tempered by a history of shame. In the standout track "Cinderella," the singer's proud swagger suddenly gives way to a crushing vulnerability - as he gazes into the eyes of a lover, he recounts the shame he felt in his childhood when he canceled a Cinderella-themed birthday party, a psychic scar he can still feel years later. Even though the memory still hurts, the song's driving force is a willingness to be vulnerable, to reach out his arms for love, even if it means risking getting hurt.

These lapses, where style and cleverness can't mask the roiling emotions, give the record its awkward grace. It's elegant when a ballerina pirouettes, and mortifying when a fag attempts the same, but Haden is no longer defensive or intimidated; he's grown into the diva he once adored as a queer kid, singing along to a pantheon of pop icons like Britney Spears and Mariah Carey. Throughout the album, past and present rub up against each other until Haden understands them as part of a larger whole: today's DeKalb Station gives way to the Delaware of his childhood, the sexually dominant adult is just a memory away from the panicked pre-pubescent confessing his infatuation. In Pirouette, Haden not only struts through the music, but dominates the entire narrative of his life.

The band's inventiveness is evident on "Poppy," with Haden's lyrics capturing the full range of their ability to vacillate between instrumental squalls and lurching, dissonant dance music: "as flesh is made in marble/as marble captures softness/as softness holds a violence/within a pure expression." Aaron Shapiro, Ruben Radlauer and Jack Wetmore are a fearsome unit that rearranges the floor and ceiling of rock music, with the jagged but interlocking complexity of each band member's reactions to the other providing both punishment and buoyancy. What should be a fistfight is instead a well-oiled machine: the knife-edge of Wetmore's guitar shimmering and tearing from one moment to the next, Radlauer building a solid ground only to rip open an abyss underfoot, Shapiro driving his bass back and forth, taking the texture from polished to shattering and back again.

One of the most oppressive divisions in the music is the way certain sounds are mapped onto and delineated from the listener's body - a fragmentation that the group on Pirouette attempts to reconcile and overcome. "Be embodied," Haden whispers at the beginning of
"Departures", while the trill of Wetmore's guitar and the drone of Radlauer's drums engage the senses from both above and below. The song builds into a firework display that gets elbows and knees, shoulders and hips moving as the punk aggression transitions into club pop. Like their music, Model/Actriz grapple with the sting of self-acceptance to arrive at startling new avenues of freedom.