Following the release of her debut album, Death of a Cheerleader, Mia Berrin—better known as Pom Pom Squad—was feeling fractured. The newfound indie cred was thrilling, but the unending dissection of her music and persona was suffocating. “At a certain point I felt like I couldn’t even control my own reflection,” she said. “All these different versions of me were swimming around in people’s heads and on the Internet, eclipsing the real me.” With her follow-up, Mirror Starts Moving Without Me, Berrin wants to make one thing clear: being the head cheerleader is overhyped and exhausting.
On Mirror Starts Moving Without Me, Berrin continues to write catchy, sugary anthems detailing the growing pains of early adulthood, this time trading punk for pop. While 2021’s Death of a Cheerleader yielded jangly songs where she assumed the perspective of a defiant teenager, now she daydreams about sitting at the top of the food chain, on more fantastical terms. With growing success comes new anxieties, so as Berrin watches her friends build families, she looks at her trajectory and asks, “Is this it?” But even in spite of her paranoia, she can’t help but want more; “I’ve tried every kind of poison but attention is the drug that I can’t quit,” she sings on opener “Downhill,” with bandmate Shelby Keller’s drumming driving her towards the brink of collapse.
Throughout, Berrin transforms into feeble characters that embody her imposter syndrome. On the Paramore-esque “Messages,” she mutates into a flightless swan, hallucinating her shadows for spirits, and berates herself for expecting success to quiet her insecurities. “I prayed for this,” she croons, defeat palpable in her voice. “And now I pay the price.” So much for her happy ending. On the stadium-sized closer “The Tower,” she plots to escape her self-constructed spire, but the journey is relentless. A prelude to the song clarifies that in tarot, the Tower forces one to ditch all preconceived notions and forge a new path. So what if she had done it all differently? As strings swell to gargantuan proportions and the guitars thrash like tidal waves, she spends the bridge rewriting her past.
In contrast to these vulnerable moments, “Villain” strikes a grotesque pose. Opening with gasps of breath and muted kick drums resembling knocks on a cabin door, Berrin paints herself as an ultra-feminine sweetheart (“White dress with my hair back in a ribbon”) but that’s just a disguise for her true motive: vengeance. The track explodes with distorted and glitched-out vocal effects that accentuate her rage (“Honey, I heard that you hate me/You should see what I’m like when I’m angry”). But the song feels outdated, both sonically and thematically—more like something from an early Billie Eilish record.
But when Berrin sheds her fairytale guises, she ends up with “Montauk,” the wistful, low-key highlight of Mirror Starts Moving Without Me. Against subdued acoustic guitar, a serene weekend getaway quickly unravels; listing a few of her favorite things, she comes to terms with being at odds with everyone around her. Conversation with her partner’s parents is stilted and awkward, the weather sucks, and she can only fantasize about buying exorbitant linens. “Wanna feel broke? You should go to the Hamptons,” she sings, both rolling her eyes and holding back tears. Her voice is cold and unwelcoming, like the chill off the Atlantic.
Even on an album steeped in melancholy, Berrin finds plenty of moments to be cheeky and theatrical, just like fellow teen queen Olivia Rodrigo and new pop star on the block Chappell Roan. You hear it best on the new-wave calorie burner “Street Fighter,” which taunts her detractors. If she wasn’t explicit enough she’ll spell it out for you, literally: “M-E-S-S-Y! You’re messy,” she growls. In an album that often casts Berrin as a damsel in distress, this is the rare moment she gets to play the part of the hero. It’s a ferocious and necessary headbanger that shows that even in her darkest moments, Berrin is determined to keep on fighting–and secure a knockout in the meantime.
