Model/Actriz Pirouette

Critic's Take

Hi, everyone. Dishthony Washtano's take on Model/Actriz and Pirouette finds the best songs balancing their abrasive motorik grooves with surprising melody - notably “Acid Rain” and “Doves”. He praises “Acid Rain” as a twinkling rock ballad that conjures magic with minimal elements, and singles out “Doves” for its tight beats and strong hook. At the same time the record still delivers the propulsive visceral grooves fans expect, especially on “Vespers” and “Poppy”, even if some instrumentals feel repetitive. Overall he concludes this is a mighty impressive second record that sidesteps the sophomore slump.

Key Points

• The best song, "Acid Rain", is best because it marries twinkling balladry with the band's moody edge and conjures magic with minimal elements.
• The album's core strengths are its tension between abrasive grooves and newfound melodic songwriting, plus vivid storytelling and thematic nostalgia.

Themes

Critic's Take

Model/Actriz's Pirouette is at once abrasive and heartbreakingly tender, and the best songs on Pirouette prove that range. The album's quieter centerpieces, especially “Headlights” and “Acid Rain”, cut deepest, a naked melancholia that feels like the record's emotional core. At the same time bruising techno cuts such as “Ring Road” and “Audience” show the band leaning into nightclub machinery with thrilling results. This is a record of polaroids, each image distinct, but it is the still, intimate moments that make the best tracks on Pirouette linger longest.

Key Points

• “Acid Rain” is the album’s emotional apex, a quiet, nakedly melancholic ballad declared the best song.
• Pirouette’s strengths are its range from bruising techno cuts to intimate, tender balladry exploring queer identity and performance.

Themes

Critic's Take

On Model/Actriz's Pirouette Sasha Geffen writes with clipped assurance, singling out “Baton”, “Cinderella” and “Poppy” as the record's clearest revelations. Geffen dwells on how “Baton” refracts identity into multiple selves, how “Cinderella” locates a childhood quietude that still stings, and how “Poppy” finds fragile consolation in falsetto and a mother's voice. The piece frames the best tracks as moments where rage and restraint collide, where the band's icy production chisels at tenderness until it glows. Read as an account of the best songs on Pirouette, the album trades raw eruption for sharp, honest calibrations of desire and image.

Key Points

• The best song is "Baton" because its closing revelation about multiplicity of self serves as the album's structural and emotional fulcrum.
• The album's core strengths are candid lyrical introspection and icy, precise production that sharpen tender moments into striking revelations.

Themes

Critic's Take

Model/Actriz make their case on Pirouette by leaning into club heat and theatrical chaos, and the best songs prove it. The review singles out “Diva” as a striking highlight, where Cole is brazen and bragadocious, and the pounding “Audience” and “Ring Road” capture the album's all-guns-blazing energy. Tender moments like “Acid Rain” and closer “Baton” provide relief, showing how the best tracks balance visceral noise with vulnerability. This is an album whose best tracks - particularly “Diva” and “Audience” - use chaos to amplify feeling rather than drown it out.

Key Points

• The best song is 'Diva' because it is called a striking highlight and showcases brazen, memorable lyrics.
• The album's core strengths are its sweaty downtown club atmosphere and the way chaos is used to expose vulnerability.

Themes

Critic's Take

Model/Actriz's Pirouette finds the band trading raw mosh-pit bravado for campy, club-ready flourish, and the best tracks - especially “Cinderella” and “Acid Rain” - show that shift most vividly. The reviewer lingers on “Cinderella” as a revelation of confession and renewed confidence, while “Acid Rain” registers as the album's true slow jam, tender and elegiac amid the grit. Elsewhere, muscular standouts like “Poppy” and “Diva” keep the feral energy intact, marrying operatic vocal moments to dance-punk hooks. This is a record that still bites, but now invites you onto the stage to perform the wound and the wink alike.

Key Points

• The best song is “Cinderella” because it crystallizes the album's confession, renewed confidence and melodic shift.
• The album's core strengths are its theatrical camp, emotional vulnerability, and successful melding of noise-rock ferocity with dance-pop hooks.

Themes

Critic's Take

From the opening ticks of Pirouette the band drags you into ecstatic excess, and the best songs - “Vespers”, “Cinderella” and “Departures” - are where Model/Actriz stitch together disco sleaze, post-punk bite and utter vulnerability. Marko's prose revels in the record's maximalist thrills, praising how “Vespers” seduces with motorik precision while “Cinderella” and “Departures” deliver scathing escapism and propulsive euphoria. This is pirouetting, club-ready noise that still makes room for intimacy - the short, brave lull of “Headlights” only amplifies the joyous sting of the album's highlights. The result is a bombastic, maximalist, absolutely beautiful exercise in noise and rhythm that ranks among the year's best records.

Key Points

• The best song is the opener "Vespers" for how it seduces with motorik precision and sets the album's ecstatic tone.
• The album's core strengths are its fusion of disco-inflected noise with vulnerable, queer catharsis and impeccable, propulsive rhythms.

Themes

Critic's Take

Model/Actriz return with Pirouette, an album that keeps their club-ready energy but wraps it in slightly more conventional structures, and the best songs - notably “Cinderella” and “Diva” - show this balance most clearly. The reviewer's voice delights in the band’s knack for marrying brash noise with sultry vulnerability, praising how “Cinderella” winds and lashes out while “Diva” turns plucky arpeggios into industrial chorus drama. Tracks like “Headlights” and “Baton” underline their versatility, pared-back moments that still sting with lyrical honesty. Overall, Pirouette is strongest when it turns every element up, even if the record sometimes slips back into familiar territory - and those peaks are what make the best tracks stand out.

Key Points

• The best song, “Cinderella”, is the clearest demonstration of the band’s command of noise, rhythm, and evolving dynamics.
• The album’s core strengths are its genreless fluidity and ability to juxtapose club-pop energy with rock instrumentation while retaining lyrical honesty.

Themes

Critic's Take

Model/Actriz sound like a band who have widened their palette on Pirouette, and the best songs - notably “Ring Road” and “Cinderella” - show why. Petridis writes in the same brisk, analytical register he uses throughout the review, noting how “Cinderella” ratchets tension with sculptured guitar noise while “Ring Road” overwhelms with a distorted jackhammer. He praises the album for pairing pummelling din with nagging tunes, making the best tracks both challenging and oddly approachable. The result is an album where the standout songs reward repeat listens without losing the original confrontational spark.

Key Points

• The best song is "Ring Road" because its overwhelming, distorted jackhammer intensity epitomises the album's confrontational power.
• Pirouette's core strength is balancing pummelling, atonal noise with nagging pop melodies and emotional, campy vocals.

Themes

Critic's Take

In a quieter, more measured register Model/Actriz’s Pirouette finds its strongest moments in intimate reckonings like “Vespers” and “Departures”, where Cole Haden trades punk theatrics for a vulnerable, elegiac tone. The record often favors restraint over rupture — that shift makes “Vespers” feel like a centerpiece, and gives “Ring Road” its harsher gravitas when the band briefly revisits Dogsbody’s cacophony. There is a persistent tension between seductive elusiveness and a missing immediacy. Yet the emotional versatility across these best tracks keeps the album compelling and worth parsing.

Key Points

• The best song, notably “Vespers”, pairs a memorable riff with oblique, elegiac lyrics that anchor the album.
• Pirouette’s core strength is its emotional and sonic versatility, trading volatility for a more measured, vulnerable engagement.

Themes

Critic's Take

Model/Actriz's Pirouette is an overwhelm that still pins a centre to its racket, and the best tracks reveal that tension. “Vespers” opens with thunder while “Headlights” turns confessional, letting melodicism flirt with chart pop amid the dark. The album's standout moments are where melody breaks through chaos, notably Vespers and Headlights, even as the latter half leans into atonal shocks. Those shocks — Audience and Ring Road among them — test patience but underscore why the record works for listeners who want friction and feeling.

Key Points

• Vespers stands out for its thunderous, immediate impact and is highlighted as an essential listen.
• The album's core strengths are its balance of melodicism and dark post-punk intensity, and its emotional friction between chaos and introspection.

Themes