Model/Actriz on Longing, Coming Out and Gaga 

Brooklyn-based post-punk/industrial group Model/Actriz have skyrocketed in years since their debut album Dogsbody was released in 2023. From performing at countless festivals like Primavera Sound Barcelona to Pitchfork Music Festival to our own Kilby Block Party, the group shows no signs of slowing down. Ahead of their May 2 release of their sophomore album Pirouette, lead singer Cole Haden and drummer Ruben Radlauer sat down with SLUG to talk about the complex nature of desire, drum machines and Lady Gaga’s Mayhem.

SLUG: I heard y’all talk about the lack of queer themes and identities within the post-punk and industrial space that you lived in for Dogsbody. Why do you think that is?

Haden: The ‘why’ is a question larger than my pedigree to answer, but I think that queer people still make the masses at large uncomfortable. The systems of governance of what makes it to people’s ears is what keeps queer people from being heard. It’s not necessarily that it doesn’t exist, so much as that the systems through which what comes to the top is not to queer people’s advantage in any place.

SLUG: Do you feel that there’s a sea change as of late? Within the last year, at least within the pop sphere and within indie bands, that there have been more right-in-your-face, openly gay members — but also openly gay albums, too.

Haden: There are a lot of openly queer people. I still think there’s a lack of representation for boys on boys.

SLUG: Within the last year there’s been a lot of sapphically focused albums and projects, too.

Haden: And I’m curious about it. Is that easier to digest because it’s from the perspective of a woman?

SLUG: I mean, it does seem like sapphic music also appeals to gay men as well, especially within the pop sphere, so it seems like the audience is reaching more than just other sapphic people. 

Haden: It does, it does. You know, I want people to feel seen by the queer themes within [our music] because that’s something I did not have necessarily growing up.

SLUG: I think it’s really important within heavier music. 

Radlauer: To speak on heavy music a little bit, it feels like in the last like 10-15 years, there’s been a lot of really good representation of queer people, but the genre as a whole still plays to traditionally harder and more masculine themes and energies. So, oftentimes, queer people have to fit into that mold of aggression or nihilism or whatever. Obviously it’s more complicated than being traditionally masculine, but since the inception of punk, and then through post-punk and industrial, it has been based on bravado and aggression in ways that has limited the ability of softness to penetrate. That’s one thing that we really tried to focus on in this album — to bring brightness and softness into a heavier space and to have those things fighting but also collaborating.

SLUG: I agree, the nature of tenderness and vulnerability through a more masculine lens is lacking. I don’t think it comes as naturally to those genres. The punk legacy is always full of contradictions too, right? I see y’all take a softer approach on the new album [Pirouette], even just sonically in the record and it does seem to be leaning even heavier into that element of tenderness and vulnerability.

Haden: Totally. It’s a coming out story. The person I am now is much, much gentler to myself than the person I was writing Dogsbody.

SLUG: Do you think that came as a result of writing Dogsbody, or is that just growth in and of itself?

Haden: There was some time that elapsed, but at the end of Dogsbody, I had kind of exorcised that demon out of me.

SLUG: I wanted to ask about the track “Headlights.” It’s this pared down narrative that I think is really wonderful, and the placement on the album is very, very cool. I want to know how true to life that song is.

Haden: It is 100% true to life. It is not a metaphor at all.

SLUG: I know you’ve said “Cinderella,” as the lead single, embodies a lot of the themes of the album, but there’s a lot of the same in “Headlights” that is an explicit telling of what this album is kind of leaning on.

Haden: “Doves” was the first song that was written for the album and I realized that I was writing about my own coming out in that song. It’s about a sanctuary that I built for myself that eventually felt like a cage. The ways that it had protected me, how it could no longer protect me. I had to find the doves, like from Noah’s Ark. Should I wait for them to return to tell me that it’s safe to leave or should I just go and not wait for their permission? That was what led me to “Headlights,” which was the last thing written for the album, actually, and it is the story of my first crush. It’s a very full circle moment between those two songs in particular.

SLUG: What is the value in writing something that can be so direct? Your lyrical style tends to lean a lot on metaphor, strong imagery and sensory elements and “Headlights” is a straight-down-the-line retelling of a strong desire.

Haden: That was my challenge to myself on this record — to feel comfortable writing directly [in a way] that I didn’t have to feel ashamed of my emotions, to obscure them through metaphor. That it was potent enough to tell it as it is. There’s still a poetic license with some things, but the album favors imagery that’s more direct as a whole. I was asking myself to be flexible.

SLUG: Do you feel like metaphor, at least for you, can sometimes be a safer route?

Haden: Yes. You share a song and when someone’s like, “What’s it about?” I wanted people to know what the songs were about. I wanted to feel more transparent.

Radlauer: Cole is talking about how, on this album, he was able to forego cloaking uncomfortable things in metaphor and be more direct. It kind of mirrors in general how we wanted the album to sound. The last album, I think, we all came in with the vision of wanting [Dogsbody] to be very distorted and claustrophobic and have this huge crush to it. On [Pirouette] we wanted to go the opposite and be very bare and open. Most of the sounds on this album are not hidden behind distortion. It’s more subtle — the instrumental version of being vulnerable. We don’t need to rely on distortion to bring the impact that matches the emotion of the song. That was big for all of us to take that leap as well.

SLUG: Pirouette does take the foot off the gas. Dogsbody is a very layered percussive project that is, at times, very abrasive. I know you guys really relished in the fact that people loved the album, but often found no appropriate time to listen to it. Cole has even said Dogsbody is not “headphone listening music” but Pirouette is.

Radlauer: That was definitely the intention. Dogsbody was exhausting to make, to listen, to play. It is just a lot. I think some of the subtlety got lost in it because it was so confrontational and exhausting sonically. On [Pirouette] it just made a lot more sense for it to be a little more digestible, at least sonically, so some of the less digestible things that went unnoticed could be easily digested.

SLUG: How do you feel you’re approaching the drumming and percussion on Pirouette? 

Radlauer: We were trying to create a house and sort of clubby backbone to all these tracks, while still using live instrumentation. That was a really fun sonic challenge to be like, “We’ve got the same drum kit: kick, snare, floor tom, crash and clap stack. How do we use that to create things that sound like they could be sampled or sequenced, the way that a drum machine might sound?” It was all very drum machine-influenced and that has been the thesis of my playing: to try and be a drum machine. To keep that sort of uncanny valley [thing] going where people assume that it is a drum machine and programmed. Where you’re listening you’re like, “What is this? It’s organic but not organic and weird, in between human and machine.”

SLUG: I love that a lot. It reminds me of, and not to call on another New York band, but The Strokes ended up doing something similar where they wanted to replicate a drum machine. In the way that their drummer played, it was a big hurdle to get over.

Radlauer: Totally. Actually, I did know about that, and when I was a teen I was influenced by that, but then I sort of forgot about it until you just brought it up, which is really funny. It’s kind of like a full circle thing.

SLUG: You guys always talk about creating tension sonically and also creating tension within the lyrics. It feels like [Pirouette] is doing so through the nature of desire and how it can create strong vulnerability, but also strong shame attached to that, especially when it comes to the nature of queer desire. 

Haden: Both albums deal with longing and desire, and I can’t formulate a response about desire as a whole. But just in the context of these two albums, there was a palpable pain, yearning and lack of fulfillment of that desire in [Dogsbody] that on [Pirouette] I was approaching with hope and faith. I’m talking to my inner child, in a sense, about introducing him to a world that he didn’t know could exist within himself. It is a softer approach to desire and there is no specific love interest, but there is an undertone of love that goes through the way that I’m speaking to myself on this one.

SLUG: The track “Cinderella” very much does that. It does seem to be fantasy fulfillment in a concrete way, and then “Acid Rain” is very much a desire for companionship. 

Haden: Well, that one’s about my grandmother, actually. I wrote it for her. It’s like in the song “Ring Road,” it’s like, “times of pain forget happy, times of happy forget pain.” I was remembering through this album all the ways that I did experience love growing up. My grandmother was in a really horrific car accident in August and I told her on the phone while she was in the hospital that I would write a song for her, and [“Acid Rain”] is what became of that. It was mostly about about the tenderness that I’ve learned from her and, luckily, it doesn’t have to end now. I was able to play the song for her in person and we were able to share that moment, which is really special. 

SLUG: That’s really wonderful. One thing the album does well in terms of desire is capturing that young and queer feeling where you see a person and you’re have that confused thought where you think, “Do I want to be this person or do I want to romantically be with this person?” That confounding nature of queer desire and queer attraction can be way less direct. 

Haden: That was me with girls. I was like, “Do I wanna be you?” I think more of that, “I like the way you draw clothes, girl.”

SLUG: I felt the same thing as well. 

Haden: Also the thing with queer desire is that the shape of the thing you’re desiring might not be something that desires you back. I constantly run into that still, where I’m asking my friends, “Is that homie gay?”and they’re like “No.” I’m like, “Fuck.”

SLUG: Does that feel like rejection?

Haden: You have to be easier on yourself than that. There’s always a person. That’s where the faith aspect comes into it. You just have to believe that there is someone there for you. Can’t let those things beat you up — that you are going to be alone for your whole life, or you’re going to be dying alone. A lot of gay people, especially ones who are not in circumstances where they can live openly, feel that. I think that’s a fear that underlies a lot of the queer experience.

SLUG: That has to feel imbued in a lot of the smaller aspects of longing and desire too.

Haden: Mm hmm.

SLUG: I wanted to ask you about your attraction to poignant, challenging, even cult-like art. You’ve mentioned Maria Abramovich before and how trying to share her work with your parents kind of led you to another dimension of shame where you started deleting stuff off of your computer from that day on. Do you still have a desire for challenging and almost explosive art?

Haden: If I was in seminary, I would be a mystic and not a theologian, so I gravitate towards things that have an innate mystery to them, or are like mirrors.

SLUG: Cole, I know you’re a big Lady Gaga fan. Do you have any opinions about her new album, Mayhem?

Haden: I think it’s the most fun she’s had since maybe ARTPOP, but with a sheen of Born This Way on it. Born This Way is my favorite album. The day that we recorded the “Cinderella” music video was the day the “Abracadabra” music video and song came out. Me, Maddie, who played the fairy godmother, Kevin, the choreographer, some of the dancers, we were all gagged by it. I mean, that song is just diabolical. [When I was young,] liking Gaga had that cult feeling to it. I remember going to see the Monster Ball in eighth grade and I invited my friend. She was very involved in her church and when we were planning on going, someone from her church wrote her a letter with 40 reasons why she shouldn’t go. Luckily, no one from my church gave me a similar letter. Liking Lady Gaga at that point felt sinful and there was just something so delicious about that. I have a streak of defiance in me anyway, so anytime someone tells me I shouldn’t do something, it just makes me want to do it more. I will go see her on this tour.

SLUG: What it was like playing Kilby Block Party last year?

Haden: The sun was unforgiving. Everything else about the festival I loved and would love to go back.

Radlauer: Yeah, we still talk about that. It’s one of our favorite shows of the last year. 

Haden: I had friends from Denver fly in for it and we had a lot of friends from LA go. It’s definitely larger than just Utah alone.

Radlauer: I mean, it’s really a class act of a festival. Also, I want to specifically shout out to the kid who did a flip in the pit. That was the best. I saw that and then made eye contact with my friend on the side who also had seen it and we both just like, “Oh my God” in the middle of the song, it was crazy.

SLUG: How would Pirouette smell?

Haden: It would smell like freshly mown grass.

Radlauer: Maybe like jasmine.

Haden: Salt spray from the ocean.

Model/Actriz’s sophomore album releases May 2 via True Panther Records/Dirty Hit and you can preorder and pre-save the album now. The tour for Pirouette begins on May 6 in Chicago, and while they won’t be stopping in Utah, you can still get tickets to a show near you.

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