Concert Review: Blondshell Bites Back at Mohawk
On the heels of her sophomore album, If You Asked For A Picture, indie-rock singer Blondshell brought ‘If You Asked For A Tour’ to Austin on Nov. 13 with support from she’s green.
Written by Janie Bickerton
Photos by Carly Schmidt
Since releasing her first single in 2022, Blondshell, the stage name for Sabrina Teitelbaum, has cemented herself as a no-frills force in the indie-rock scene. In 2025, she avoided the sophomore slump by upping the ante on her vulnerable, vengeful lyrics and pithy intonation with If You Asked For A Picture. To celebrate the release of her companion album, Another Picture, Teitelbaum brought her tour to the Mohawk outdoor stage, singing old and new favorites on a comfortable November night.
To warm the stage for Blondshell, shoegaze starlet she’s green welcomed fans to the show at 7:59 p.m., starting off with the dreamy, soft percussion of “Graze.” Donning a black maxi dress and a white blouse, frontwoman Zofia Smith slightly swayed in the tight space, tapping her tambourine to embellish the sounds of her bandmates before the soft instrumentations bloomed into a rock clash. At times, the instruments drowned out Smith’s high-pitched vocals, but when the band shifted to “Little Birds” from its new EP Chrysalis, Smith’s sirenic sound lulled the crowd in as she repeated “I can hear them now.” Smith shifted from head voice to her impressively poignant chest voice for the soft-rock “smile again” before delivering the highlight of the set, an unreleased song featuring a gritty bass lick that got the crowd bouncing. The bandmates immersed themselves in the music, dancing in their respective places and showing the comfort they take in playing music with each other. Ending its set with its most popular song, “Mandy,” the band focused on the craft of the fuzzy, familiar song and gave the audience a small “thank you” to finish its 30-minute strictly music set.
At 9:00 p.m., Teitelbaum and her band casually walked on stage to start their set with a mellow version of Blondshell’s third single from 2025, “23’s A Baby.” Dressed in all black, Teitelbaum still drew attention through flailing hand motions as she confidently sang, “But you deserve some hell from me / While I figure out if you're the enemy.” Surprisingly, Teitelbaum saved the forceful “ahhhs” found in “23’s A Baby” for her backup singer and bassist Maia Nelson, adding to the set’s subtlety. The bare nature of the performance gave space for her lyrics to shine, as Blondshell sang, “I've been running this ship like the navy / But it's more like a Wendy's,” in her next song, “Toy.” Teitelbaum gave a silly hip shake to the crowd during a guitar break, bringing life to the song’s awkward vulnerability.
Teitelbaum ushered for the crowd to get louder for “Docket,” to which they happily obliged. The New York native sang rock band Bully’s part of the song, feeling every lyric with her clear enunciation. Teitelbaum took a quick sip from her burgundy Owala and greeted the audience before the crowd favorite “Sepsis,” where the singer sat at the edge of the stage to passionately sing the title lines with the audience: “He's gonna start infecting my life / It will hit all at once like sepsis.”
The singer once again omitted the powerful “ahhhs” in “What’s Fair,” translating their vehemence in the form of the electric guitar. Teitelbaum felt the lyrics by dancing with her wrists, expressing a restrained vitriol towards her mother by singing, “I didn’t choose you / You chose me.” The song’s bubbling rage continued with “Veronica Mars,” which had Teitelbaum kneeling on the ground during a cathartic solo from her electric guitarist Ray Libby. Blondshell then gave a smug rendition of her heartrending song “Arms” by saving the higher register featured on the recorded chorus for Nelson while Teitelbaum sang an octave lower than usual, refusing to tap into the song’s emotional punch. Teitelbaum did go up an octave for the chorus of “T&A,” which she plainly introduced as “a song about tits and ass.” She spoke the matter-of-fact lyric, “I said if you stop drinking maybe I could find you attractive,” to the audience, shedding the melody for a plain evocation of her stance on the song’s friend-turned-reluctant-lover.
The indie rocker introduced her next song as one that was coming out that night as part of her deluxe album, Another Picture. Complete with spacey guitar and the vivid imagist lyrics she’s known for, “Berlin TV Tower” gave the audience the chance to celebrate the new release and focus on the performance without singing along. After adding a tinge of country influence to her rock set with “Change” and singing the song’s bridge with the front row, Teitelbaum whispered with Nelson the intro to Addison Rae’s “Diet Pepsi.” Phones went up across the crowd to record her version of the viral hit, complete with Blondshell’s signature, pointed enunciation and a lower register chorus than Rae’s original. Teitelbaum cut the song before the higher-octave final chorus, leaving the moment unfinished as she transitioned into her first-ever single that set her off on a career of confessional lyricism, “Olympus.” Teitelbaum bobbed her claw-clipped blonde hair while faint colored lights doused the stage, as they did throughout her simple set.
Teitelbaum then played “Tarmac,” another song from her debut self-titled album, which had the crowd head bobbing to the track about the vicious cycle of an inescapable relationship. The singer thankfully fully leaned into the adlibbed “ahhhs” in the repeating outro, “Make it feel better.” She then switched from self-loathing to sick infatuation with “He Wants Me” from her 2025 album, admitting to the audience her strangest fascinations: “I sleep so hard when you're around / I like the shape of your nose and the little sound.” Teitelbaum culminated her set full of slick sensuality with “Kiss City,” a song that mixed sexual vividness with saccharine sentiments and warranted her high register delivery for an ethereal yet stilted performance.
After convincingly leaving the stage and bidding the crowd adieu, Blonshell and her band returned for the encore, starting off slow with the self-reflective “Event of a Fire.” Teitelbaum sat on the stage floor as she considered what she does for herself and for others, singing, “'Cause part of me never left her in 2012 / Part of me is still getting all of my haircuts for someone else.” The singer then admitted that Mohawk has been her choice of Austin venue for years and thanked the crowd for filling it up the most that she had seen in her years of touring.
The opening chimes of “Salad” promised the most brooding rock song of the night as the show’s closer. With a mixture of rage and sadness, Blondshell sang of exacting revenge on an abuser, giving the top rows of Mohawk the Kubrick Stare as she peered into the crowd. The singer quickly gave her goodbyes before the final chorus of the explosive song, leaving the crowd reeling with vengeance and in awe of Blondshell’s ability to display all facets of love, in its grimiest desires and bitterest thoughts, in a one-hour set.
While some songs felt cut short or untapped for all of its energy, Blondshell still showed Austin the bounds of vulnerability, allowing her simplistic stage design to shift the focus to her unwavering vocal delivery and emotionally potent lyrics.