Model/Actriz at Band on the Wall

Blending post-punk aggression with queer pop and industrial techno, New York’s Model/Actriz play at Band on the Wall in support of their second album, Pirouette.

The four-piece broke out in 2023 with their debut album Dogsbody – a feral coming-of-age record that caught album of the year buzz around the world. An ode to growing up in a city oozing with temptation, it’s packed with industrial noise, dark and groovy beats and unnerving hushed vocals. The Needle Drop’s Anthony Fantano called it a “Noise dance punk record that has the mental impact of the most intense psychological thriller”.

The band’s second album hits differently. Peeling away the smoke and mirrors, Model/Actriz get brighter, heavier, and more direct on Pirouette. Apparently drawing influence from artists like Lady Gaga and Grace Jones, frontman Cole Haden becomes more attuned to pop melodies and more commanding in their delivery. Even on vaguely nightmarish tracks like ‘Vespers’, we get pretty vocal lines that stick, while ‘Cinderella’ opens up lyrically, with full-eye-contact vulnerability from Haden, who sings about his suppressed childhood wish of having a Cinderella birthday party.

The album also dials up the clubbier side of the band. Where Dogsbody stalked New York City alleyways at night, Pirouette heads for a dark corner of the dancefloor. Tracks like ‘Doves’ channel some demented, brutalised version of LCD Soundsystem, with the drums pounding with mechanical persistence and Haden teetering between sneer and seduction. Propulsive enough to make you move, dissonant enough to make you uneasy.

On stage, that tension comes alive. Model/Actriz shows are part rave, part avant-garde theatre, with Cole Haden prowling, snarling and locking eyes until the whole room feels implicated. The band call their gigs ‘a portal of invitation and transcendence’ – a kind of vulnerability shared within the noise. That holds true for Pirouette, too, where brutality carries something tender just beneath the surface.