A pop star with earnest teachings, her ascending breakthrough is indebted to more than her sparkly music. Curnow’s output always carries a vulnerable undercurrent. Even during her glamorous Manic Dream Pixie era, her pensive words about past romantic and traumatic tribulations are an effective contrast. Curnow’s fearlessness in widely sharing her tragic musings shows a sincerity in the Australian pop world where that’s scarce.
As her fanbase has grown exponentially, Curnow has consolidated her affirming voice as Peach PRC for them and now the world. Porcelain is that long-anticipated statement, with much of her pastel aesthetic replaced by an earthier, subdued, and fairytale-like one. Curnow’s light brunette hair is far from her all-too-familiar previous vibrant pink, but it signals the greater candidness she hopes to convey going forward. Deviating from her adored theatrical past, Porcelain is a thoughtful transformation into her authentic reality.
The electro-pop opener “Piper” situates fans in the newly arboreal and considered fantastical Peach PRC world, dense with forest greens. An especially potent taste of change is in “Eucalyptus”, both an ode to the native Australian genus and Curnow’s recent embracement of spirituality: “I know that I said all that shit about God … I was raised by atheists, forgive me.” There was a time when Curnow resisted the shame religion can impose, speaking from her Christian college experience in her early breakout single “God Is a Freak”. As evidenced by her new track, she’s walked back on her holier-than-thou approach. Fairies and plants grant Curnow her spiritual solace, but when she later sings “I’ve never read the Bible / But I’ve smoked a page or two” on “Oasis”, some debauchery still enters her worldview.
Even so, that course-correction displays growth. She utilises the unexpected positivity from bad situations or ill-informed perspectives and offers that to the public for them to cherish. On “Pink”, she walks through her tumultuous childhood but responds to its instability by celebrating the bright, rosy colour which protected her and gave her so much joy in her career. The usual Peach PRC fare is on “Miss Erotica”, a sultry dance-pop banger and love letter to the strip clubs that shaped her during early adulthood. It plays out as a song she would’ve wanted to hear, or dance to, during her life in that sensory-heavy world. That’s heightened by the surreal video and its queer glamour, featuring Curnow as a centaur beside other femme dancers.
Porcelain proceeds to close with consecutive supercharged pop ballads. In person, the unceasingness would certainly be a magical spectacle, but on leisurely playthroughs, it comes across as slightly sappy – the impact of her ruminations is lessened. Given the personal subject matter she details, it’s no wonder she doesn’t wholly plunge into fantasy. Despite the escapism, Curnow is compelled to keep her optimism real. There’s an undergrowth of maturity on Porcelain, and for the most part, Curnow has delicately cut the clearest path she can to it.
