ALBUM REVIEW: POSTER CHILD BY TAYLOR ACORN
Reviewed by Cecilia Pattison-Levi“You’re pissing me off but I never say” opens the new album from rock musician Taylor Acorn with her 12-song, ‘Poster Child’. “You don’t like my hair, my clothes, my hair/ I need a change”. She admitted live in concert to being a ‘People Pleaser’ even though she knows it’s wrong. The album has lyrics like: “I don’t speak my mind/but you shut me up anyway” and “would let you run me over” to find validation. She asks to be “put out of her misery” as she states you should not mix “feelings with negligence” and that “she is the poster child for screwing things up” and “but you make me this way”. There’s a lot going on here in this follow up to her wonderful first album ‘Survival in Motion’.
Taylor Acorn has been releasing her music independently for over nine years. She comes from Tioga County, Pennsylvania in the US. She has visited Australia a few times over the last two years and was at ‘Good Things 2024’. I have caught her live every time she has performed here and that should tell you that I really like the music and songs this musician is writing and creating. It is important to know that Taylor Acorn is a songwriter. In 2016 she was writing country-tinged pop songs and went to Nashville to learn song craft. But her rock and pop-punk style has evolved over the past six years and she has a unique approach to the emo-punk genre that was on show in her first album ‘Survival in Motion’. So, lyricism, melodies, whipping choruses and narrative examination are at the heart of her music style.
So, this album opens with the cutting ‘People Pleaser’ that is a song about overcoming the negative loathing of others’ opinions and only being around for other’s “leisure”. The following song ‘Crashing Out’ with its thick guitar riffs, clashing drums, and her evocative vocals collide to deliver another undeniable pop-punk anthem. With raw, relatable lyrics, Taylor Acorn belts out: “can’t slow down, it only makes me want you more”, capturing the chaos of a volatile, touch-and-go romance. Then, ‘Hangman’ is an album highlight of a failed relationship as she asks for the ex-lover to “spell it out for me” as she is “hanging on by a thread” and asks to be “put out of her misery”.
The big guitars and driving drums bring in the title track ‘Poster Child’ about Taylor Acorn’s ability to self-sabotage. It’s channelling the raw spirit of late 1990s and early-2000s pop-punk but the song will become a fan favourite as I can hear it being sung live in stadiums. The nostalgic ‘Home Videos’ is a lovely track about the waiting days and wishing for stardom. But, the “best friends down the street” and “playing T-Ball in the yard” are a vision of a past life out of reach. Life “don’t slow down for no one”. Then, Taylor Acorn admonishes an old lover as a user on the mid-tempo ‘Cheap Dopamine’. She compares her love to a drug as she is the “cheap dopamine” hit. It is lyrically wise and full of her mother’s advice as she realised that the love being experienced was “faulty” but she couldn’t see through the “rose coloured haze”.
The next three songs up the tempo with the big guitar riffs and the aggression, she admonishes a male who did her wrong “you better run mother***ker” as he “threw down the victim card” and has ‘Blood On Your Hands’ but he is “not getting away” without her getting even. It is followed by ‘Goodbye, Good Riddance’ that is the absolute kiss-off song of never looking back. I really like it and will enjoy screaming that out loud at her next concert. It is unapologetic and empowered vengeful song. Then, ‘Sucker Punch’ was the cheap shot needed to be suffered “to be better off now” as the song describes “the ending of us” as it is a “knock right off my feet”.
The song ‘Vertigo’ is a pop-punk love song about the butterflies of falling in love hard. Those spins are surely vertigo not love. Then, ‘Theme Park’ has a quiet intro with an acoustic guitar and it’s a ballad about life and love being a roller-coaster ride. The quiet verse and loud chorus with that lovely bridge works so well on this song of happiness in love as the “heart is a theme park” and “making her feel like a kid again”. The album closes out with the big ballad ‘Masquerade’. It’s a about ditching the mask and jumping off the stage as she “smashes the champagne as I run out the door” as this situation “isn’t fun anymore”.
‘Poster Child’ is rich in metaphor of chemical dependencies about love with its highs and lows. Her music is wrapped in pop-punk that allows for the emotional charge to either earth itself or head back to the heavens. The devil is in the detail in this album as it is lyrical captivating and engaging that sounds like a “runaway train” but also “slams on the brakes”. It’s a wild ride!
