Early in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll's title character quickly loses all sense of self after obeying an EAT ME and a DRINK ME, the life-shifting instructions passed to her anonymously. “I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night,” Alice ponders. “Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle.” Pom Pom Squad’s Mia Berrin has had that question tumbling around her head too—due to the endless feedback and expectations since releasing her sublime debut album Death of a Cheerleader in 2021 rather than any enchanted cake. “Receiving attention, negative or positive, left me feeling very fragmented, constantly thinking about other people’s perceptions,” Berrin says. “At a certain point I felt like I couldn’t even control my own reflection. All these different versions of me were swimming around in people’s heads and on the internet, eclipsing the real me.” And on Pom Pom Squad’s sophomore LP, aptly titled Mirror Starts Moving Without Me (due October 25 via City Slang), Berrin traverses the hall of mirrors to celebrate the true self at the heart.

Berrin arrived on the scene with a stunning clarity of voice—even while smashing together opposing ideas, dressed in a cheerleader outfit and blending punk sneer, ‘60s pop sugar, and indie rock buzz. Fresh out of the New York DIY scene, Death of a Cheerleader brimmed with coming of age tunes that guilefully explored acceptance, love, and pain. “Growing up as a woman of color, being queer, feeling marginalized, putting on this cheerleader outfit and calling this punk project Pom Pom Squad felt ironic, campy, and powerful,” Berrin affirms. “I could work things out within myself and challenge people’s hangups. I created a space where I could be strong and emotional while redefining femininity for myself.”

That’s an inspiring message for anyone aligning their ambitions with such complex emotions, and the record rightfully earned rapturous reviews and crowds euphorically singing along to every word. While electrifying, that also left Berrin feeling like every breath and feeling became part of some larger artistic expression. Her tongue-in-cheek expressions of identity were getting written in stone. “After the album was out, I didn’t realize how constantly I was going to be perceived, and it brought up a lot of feelings I’d been repressing.” she explains. “It was a dark time in my life, but it led me to get back in touch with who I really am at my core. It took a lot to get to a place where I could share myself again and start to dismantle that fear.”

As such, Mirror Starts Moving’s triumphant lead single “Downhill” finds Berrin immediately rejecting expectations and embracing the joys and pains as they come. Utilizing burning synths and a four-on-the-floor disco beat rather than the glowing punk of the record’s predecessor, the track compares the last year to a slowly unfolding car crash, or maybe being buried alive. But rather than fight against the smoldering guitar fuzz and smoky backing vocals, Berrin finds herself finding her potency in their midst: “Heaven help me I’m in love with it/ Get in/ We’re going down fucking hill,” she smirks. Here, we’re hurtling toward the abyss, willingly.

After co-producing Pom Pom Squad’s debut, Berrin returns to that task on Mirror Starts Moving with a renewed confidence and experimentality. “I had spent the last couple of years tinkering in Logic, writing intuitively and trying not to think about genre,” she says. “My mom raised me on New Wave, Sade, and Prince, and my dad introduced me to hip-hop. For this record, I listened to a lot of FKA twigs and Beyoncé’s Renaissance. Across it all, I just learned to find emotionality, to create a space that felt honest.” 

Three years removed from Death of a Cheerleader, Berrin’s comfort with bandmates drummer Shelby Keller, bassist Lauren Marquez, guitarist Alex Mercuri and new addition, Berrin’s co-producer and co-writer Cody Fitzgerald of Stolen Jars gave her an added sense of confidence and freedom in that genre-spanning experimentation. Working in the legendary confines of Electric Lady Studios allowed a refined palette as well. “I used to walk past the studio when I was in college and just wonder what it felt like to record there,” Berrin says, retaining that youthful awe. “And it just felt incredible. Everything was prepared perfectly down to the coffee, set up and ready for inspiration to hit.”

Second single “Spinning” exemplifies that process, Berrin reeling from pain and betrayal—though here backed by crystalline pings of piano, thrumming bass, and a slow-shuffling drum beat. Like a pop song on withdrawals, or a Speedy Ortiz track built for post-apocalyptic radio, “Spinning” builds an impeccable depth of field that reveals more with each listen. Lyrically, Berrin knows just how to deliver a hook to rewire hurt feelings into an inescapable triumph: “If you really wanna see me crack/ If you really want to hurt me back/ You’re winning winning/ I’m spinning spinning out.”

Berrin continued to stretch through the hurdles, her teeth alternating between gnashing intensity and stinging smile. Even with her heavier involvement in the production, Berrin’s biggest challenge in the record—or even her entire life, she suggests—may have been actually getting in the booth. “Recording these vocals was one of the hardest creative experiences I've ever had,” she says. “There was so much crying. Everything I sang on the first day in the studio was completely unusable.” Album highlight “Everybody’s Moving On” likely involved more than a few tears, a haunting acoustic-driven ballad about friends and loved ones growing apart, feeling "born to love and cursed to lose." For album closer “The Tower”, Berrin remembers writing an early sketch of the sprawling and heartbreaking song while standing in her newly empty apartment, as she was about to move homes, sobbing and unable to come back to the song for a year. “It was good ‘til it wasn’t/ And all of a sudden/ My wonderland turned into hell,” she soars as the choral vocals and thundering percussion climb stairs to oblivion.

The songs necessitate reaching that emotional depth, befitting their inspiration from the likes of Alice and anime protagonists Sailor Moon and Perfect Blue's Mima Kirigoe. “Those are all women who go through this massive change and have to work out how they deal with the way they’re perceived and using their voice,” Berrin says. “There was some real conflict and pain in my growth to this album, and those journeys really resonated with me. They helped me contextualize what parts of my identity were put on and what was me.” While those narratives helped inspire the darker visual tones in the album’s rollout, her love of hip-hop provided a lyrical frame for identity exploration, channeled through her queer, feminist perspective and new wave and R&B emotionality. Fitzgerald, Keller, Marquez, and Mercuri, alongside bassist and frequent collaborator Alina Sloan, brought a further diversity of genre to the table, as the group started the recording process by bringing a playlist of their favorite songs from childhood to the studio. Pulling references from those formative musical memories proved more than cathartic, both in the work and the results. “It was jarring how many songs we all had in common!” Berrin says. “There was a sense of ease and understanding within our little crew. While we were pulling from similar sonic palettes, our own individual musical backgrounds were able to shine through”

But Mirror Starts Moving has just as many deliciously vicious laughs as it does sorrowful tears, Berrin frequently employing a devilish chuckle. The explosive beat for “Villain” is composed of gasps and exhales, distorted Sleigh Bells swagger and churn, Berrin refusing to play nice. “Yeah I’m the villain/ Target in sight and I’m willing/ Hungry for blood and I’m venomous/ Fuck around and find out who the villain is,” she smiles, blood already dripping from her teeth. After an intro from her mom insisting to “pay those bitches no mind,” the thrilling “Street Fighter” similarly puts up its dukes by subverting her cheerleader tendencies ("M-E-S-S-Y/ You're messy") and embracing her inner video game and anime-loving geekdom (“Street Fighter/ Igniter/ Short fuse if you light my fire/ Press start to try again/ I’m not your fucking friend”).

Rather than presenting a mythic identity or a playful ironic costume, Mirror Starts Moving finds Berrin’s inner self fully enmeshed in Pom Pom Squad. A life-changing effort that feels effortless for the listener, she’s now sharing the way the world’s pains impact her while remaining powerful enough to make a massive dent of her own. Much like Alice back in Wonderland, each day is full of mind-bending, perspective-shifting adventure, but now Berrin has found a surefire way to soften the hardest edges of the changing storm: acknowledging every funhouse mirror while empowering her heart beating at the core of it all.