A week after the release of Lady Gaga’s new album, ‘Mayhem’, Model/Actriz vocalist and self-proclaimed Little Monster Cole Haden is reflecting on his icon’s latest offering.

"‘Abracadabra’ gagged me," he admits, "that was the serve I was waiting for; it was diabolical. Nothing’s going to compete with ‘Born This Way’ for me, though. I was 15 when that came out, figuring out I was gay, and my only escapes were music and Tumblr. I need to realise that the confluence of those moments is impossible to recreate."

What might feel like an unrelated way to start a conversation instead enlightens the key themes and ideas that tie together to make Model/Actriz’s second album, ‘Pirouette’, the follow-up to 2023’s scorching industrial-rock debut, ‘Dogsbody’.

Where ‘Dogsbody’ was a jagged, metallic embodiment of catharsis, complemented by a deliciously dysfunctional live show, ‘Pirouette’ is a softer-edged yet powerfully introspective selection of songs aimed at self-discovery, stretching out to fill the shape and boundaries of a band growing in artistic confidence and sonic adventure.

Designed to emphasise contrasts, to collide competing feelings about ego, identity, and definition, in amongst a soundscape that tunes down the chaos into a more considered, accessible palette, this sophomore album used fear as its driving force, with Cole unravelling previously unseen parts of his soul in the name of art.

"Before [lead single] ‘Cinderella’ came out I was vacillating between terrified and chuffed, if that’s the right word? My trepidation came from a challenge to myself to be more transparent than I’d been before. There’s less need for interpretation on this record; it’s more direct. Where ‘Dogsbody’ was most clearly revealed in the performance and obscured through lyrics, ‘Pirouette’ trades that for lyrics that are stark truths and literal stories. I think my feeling uncomfortable was me reaching my goal; I’m very proud of this record."

The making of ‘Pirouette’ took a very different form to ‘Dogsbody’, an album that was the culmination of seven years of existence as a band. The success of ‘Dogsbody’, in both fan and critic circles, set Model/Actriz on a seemingly endless cycle of global touring that created a stop-start approach to writing new tracks and a communal fatigue that, perhaps counter-intuitively, created the environment from which ‘Pirouette’ was born.

"It was interesting going from writing with an endless timeline to writing between tours and trying to find creative sparks when you’re so tired," drummer Ruben Radlauer recalls. "We struggled for a while to get there; it took a year of soul-searching before we felt confident in what we were doing, but we managed to break through into something exciting."

Cole adds: "The experience was more grounded in the ways we were listening to our bodies and how they were responding to the deluge of chaos and the fact we were constantly moving. I remember being in a house in Nashville for a week in Fall 2023 between tour stops and we’d set the time aside to write. Out of exhaustion, we were in this flow state, and ‘Vespers’ suddenly came out. It was the new feeling we were looking for and kept returning to; it felt fresh."

‘Pirouette’ is "only half a departure" from ‘Dogsbody’, in Cole’s words, but it nevertheless feels like the band have entered a new sonic, lyrical, and aesthetic phase. Shrouding itself in the same brooding yet bombastic atmosphere that made ‘Dogsbody’ such a departure from post-punk-slash-noise-rock norms, whilst also drawing on synth-pop moments to expand the borders of light and shade, it’s an album that represents evolution rather than revolution. Model/Actriz aren’t ripping up the rulebook and starting again; they’re simply playing with expectations, both internal and external.

Describing the writing process, Ruben strikes to the heart of this sentiment: "‘Dogsbody’ felt like we were writing the last album we would ever write; it was a culmination of what we were trying to express, and so we were really precious and sensitive over it. ‘Pirouette’ feels like the first album of the rest of our lives. We opened up melodic and musical doors; there’s optimism and more open space, and it’s less claustrophobic."

He continues: "It felt like ‘Dogsbody’ had to be all these things because it had taken us so long to get there. ‘Pirouette’ gave us the chance to sit back and ask, ‘Who are we?’. The answer is that we can be anyone we want to be."

The conundrum of self-understanding lies at the heart of ‘Pirouette’, as Cole determines the album’s lyrical path through personal tales of queer awakening, inbuilt doubt and taught shame and his ultimate journey to self-acceptance. The traversal of this route isn’t linear, swirling through memories of being a Disney princess-inspired five-year-old in ‘Cinderella’, jolting forward to an infatuation with a beautiful stranger in ‘Departures’, before travelling back to a re-telling of his coming out in ‘Doves’. This feeling of spiralling, of being knocked off balance by a memory perhaps inadvertently unlocked, is animated by the album’s title.

"‘Pirouette’ was in contention for the first album," Cole remembers, "but it’s more suitable for this one. It embodies the dichotomy of being in and out of control, of rotating, of disorienting yourself. But, in a balletic sense, to execute that movement, you need to be strong and poised, and that was the internal journey for me on this album."

That feeling of something just out of reach carries over into the album’s artwork: a bright white backdrop held in place by a black bar rail. It’s an image that, for Cole, illuminates an idea of what comes next, of a step into the unknown:

"I don’t like making things with the idea that I’m going to fully understand them. For me, the front cover is a gate. The idea of a gate as a threshold, a barrier, I liked what it evoked. I think it’s the closest to what heaven’s gates look like, with the most important part being the light behind it; it’s aspirational of a better world that you’re trying to get into."

Religious imagery appears in flashes across the record, whether in the form of prayer-filled memories in ‘Headlights’, or in the aforementioned tale of courage and affirmation in ‘Doves’, feeding back into the conflict that defines the album’s trajectory, this time pulling at the tension between religious ideas and growing up as a queer youth in America.

"I grew up partially in the church until I was 15. I still believe in God, I still have faith, but I don’t affiliate myself with the institution anymore. It was hard to reconcile what I was discovering in myself and the attitude of the ideology that was presented as being right to me. The biggest challenge is coming out to yourself. It took me a while to believe that I could live openly as a gay person and that it wasn’t something to fear."

He continues: "‘Doves’ was the first song written for the album, and ‘Headlights’ was the last. ‘Doves’ is basically a dreamscape re-telling of my coming out with characters named after people in Noah’s Ark. ‘Headlights’ is a song I wasn’t ready to write until the end of the process. When I reached the point where I could tell that story, it felt like I’d reached the summit of everything I was trying to achieve on this record."

Bearing so much of one’s soul to a baying audience is always a risk, making the widespread love for lead single ‘Cinderella’ all the more settling for Ruben and Cole. What comes across most clearly from the pair, though, is that their assured belief in the project, and in each other more broadly, made ‘Pirouette’ less of a challenge and more of a chance to truthfully reflect themselves as musicians and as people.

"‘Dogsbody’ wasn’t a risky album to make," Ruben states, "we accomplished everything we wanted to with a very specific sound, vibe, and journey. We could have easily done something cohesively similar to that, but it wouldn’t have been exciting for us or anyone else. ‘Dogsbody’ thrived on the constraints we had set and worked in the walls that we built around it, but we’d reached the limit of that, so we had to create solutions. We consciously broadened our palette. If we’re going to let people see different parts of ourselves, it needed to be more intimate."

Cole nods: "This album is broader in scope but there’s nothing really that’s going to give you whiplash. It allows us to sit outside the pre-conceived notion of what we are."

As is to be expected from a band with such a global appeal, ‘Pirouette’ is heavily imbued with themes and stories picked up from their time on the road, most clearly told through ‘Diva’, a hedonistic twirl through time spent in Europe that sees Cole in "a scenario where I’m being my most insufferable self on a date", allowing him to once again highlight dichotomy through the philosophy of being a diva.

"Being a diva doesn’t mean being a bitch," Cole explains. "It’s being both human and divine, exalted and familiar. It’s about being a myth, stepping into your goddess, poise; it’s a very respectable and hard role to play, but I believe I have the skill to do it."

It was important for Cole to highlight the importance of divas in his story, but it equally allowed him to combine a wickedly delectable persona with the soulful longing of a life nearly lived.

"The guys in Copenhagen and Amsterdam that I sing about are real people; if they listen to the song, they’ll know who they are. You have to table your personal life on the road, but there are some people who make you think about an alternative timeline where you don’t have to leave, so you have to deceive yourself from knowing that you’ll never see them again."

Heartache, whether in the romantic or the more foundational, existential sense, permeates throughout ‘Pirouette’, drawing the listener into the context of the time within which the album was written. As a band openly creating art with a queer centre, exploring all the facets of what it means to be gay in a world that wants to deny your existence, ‘Pirouette’ acts as a resistance against regression, against division.

"We’re not policymakers; we can’t make a change in Congress," Cole outlines, "so what can we do as a rock band? The best thing we can do is be loud, and we can make any room we enter feel like a refuge from a world that’s working against them."

Ruben echoes this point in a broader sense, reflecting on time spent outside of the USA to underline that, if you want acceptance and diversity to thrive, art is the cornerstone around which you build. "It feels like there’s more respect and appreciation for art and music in Europe, partly through funding opportunities, for sure. Coming over to the UK or wherever makes me feel a bit more hopeful about the future of art because in the US, everyone’s struggling; nobody has health insurance or any kind of safety net. It’s very stuck in capitalism, and everybody’s been choked out by the same three corporations, so it’s good to get out. It’s good to get further from the communities we know and to open the world up."

Model/Actriz are focused on the future, but they’re not precious about what direction they head in. Constantly looking back in order to take another step forward, it feels as though Cole and Ruben have subsumed any expectation that they have either of themselves or the world around them.

The existence of perfect timing may not be provable, although the alignment of Cole’s queer realisation and Gaga’s release of ‘Born This Way’ does carry the serendipitous feel of fateful circumstance, but it appears as if Model/Actriz have spun their way into the spotlight just when they’re needed most. A physical manifestation of knife-edge living, outwardly keeping composure whilst their innermost selves toil and twist at the unpredictable pain of existence, ‘Pirouette’ is the road to enlightenment.