There is a specific kind of dread that Cinderella* deals in — not the jump-scare variety, but the slow creep. The kind that sits in the corner of the room at a party, nursing a drink, waiting for the right moment. Model/Actriz, the Brooklyn post-punk outfit who spent their debut record Dogsbody* trying to set your nervous system on fire, have pulled something more precise here. This is the first taste of their forthcoming album Pirouette* (May 2, True Panther Records), and if the rest of the record carries this kind of controlled menace, we’re in for something genuinely special.
The video, directed by Nathan Castiel, takes the fairy tale and doesn’t so much subvert it as relocate it somewhere considerably seedier. Frontman Cole Haden is Cinderella here — not the Disney version, not even the Andrew Lloyd Webber version, but the one who ends up at a party they maybe shouldn’t be at, with someone they maybe shouldn’t trust, experiencing something unforgettable. The clip opens in the kind of domestic drab that feels vaguely suffocating — harsh light, cramped interiors, the texture of a life being lived under duress. Castiel keeps the camera close on Haden throughout, and it’s a smart choice. Haden performs with a watchful, coiled quality, like someone who knows the punchline to a joke that hasn’t been told yet.
There’s a stillness in the early passages that the video and the track share — both holding the same breath. “Anyone who spent time with The Smile‘s “Wall of Eyes” will recognise the instinct — find a frontman who can carry unease in their face alone, point a camera at them, and largely stay out of the way.”
At 2:03, the song shifts, and the clip follows it somewhere much darker and much more alive. The rave materialises, bruised purples and strobed whites cracking open the desaturated palette of everything before it. It earns the release precisely because Castiel has been so patient — the euphoric chaos actually means something by the time you get there, rather than just happening because the BPM picked up. It’s a music video that understands the architecture of the track it’s serving, which is rarer than it should be.
The track itself strips back the full-tilt noise of their previous release ‘Dogsbody‘ and finds Model/Actriz working in tighter, more unsettling spaces. A single bass note, a coiled guitar fret, and then the vocals — close, dark, almost confessionally intimate — narrating a date with a beautiful man and the complicated shame that surfaces afterwards without asking permission. The song builds the way a good short story builds: unhurried, deliberate, every detail placed where it will eventually detonate. When the chorus locks in and Haden chants over a groove that’s part industrial and part something you could actually dance to, the relief is real. And then it tightens again. The whole thing is a lesson in punchline delivery.
Model/Actriz are one of those bands who seem slightly too wired for the indie crowd and slightly too precise for the noise crowd — and Cinderella* sits exactly in that uncomfortable middle space and dares you to blink. The video is a genuine companion piece rather than just content to accompany a release. Watch it twice: once for the visuals, once to clock how perfectly the two things are breathing together.
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