Pouty Confronts the Horrors of Growing Older on Forgot About Me

Aging isn’t a humanitarian crisis but, at some point in our lives, it tends to become one. Maybe you’ve noticed a gray hair or two hiding in your scalp, or you find yourself turning into bed earlier than you used to. Our corporate world provides many fixes: $80 skincare, cosmetic surgery, even brain implants. But sometimes, the best solution is to just play through the pain. And Rachel Gagliardi—who records as pop-rock artist Pouty—plays. Through and beyond college, she was in the DIY punk duo Slutever with Nicole Synder; their last project was 2015’s Almost Famous, which was riotous and searing punk rock. Gagliardi’s first EP as Pouty, 2016’s Take Me to Honey Island, was similarly gritty with a poppier edge. Her 2021 single “Bambina,” written after her daughter Madonna was born, provided a hint for newer music to come—it was softer pop rock that had lost none of its bite: “Time is a bitch and so am I,” she sang smugly in its opening verse.

On Pouty’s debut full-length, Forgot About Me, Gagliardi surrounds her maturing soul with blazing power pop. With a bright, pointed voice and crunchy backing band—which was made in part with musicians and friends from the Philly DIY scene (the album was produced by Evan Bernard and Chris Baglivo of Philly alt-rock band The Superweaks)—Pouty’s music can be both sickeningly sweet and spitefully scorching. On album opener “Salty,” she taunts an unknown assailant who could very well be her current self: “I bet you almost forgot about me,” she sings, her voice diving into a stormy chorus and raging with acceptance. “I’m not embarrassed I can even accept it / The better part of it,” she continues, as if to underscore a newfound authority.

Forgot About Me is full of these big lyrical pronouncements, lending the music an expansive soundscape despite how fuzzy the songs can get. “The Big Stage,” punctuated by a winding bassline and heavy power chords, plays a bit like a Nickelodeon theme song with its cheesy big dream themes: “I wanna play, I wanna play on the big stage,” the first line goes, recalling Gagliardi’s 2011 children’s punk project The Weenies, which featured fitting titles for five-year-olds like “NO MORE VEGGIES” and “I WANNA STAY UP ALL NIGHT.” It’s perhaps that sincerity that drives “The Big Stage”—and other playground-chanty tracks like “Virgos Need More Love”—into joyous listens for any age. The latter, in particular, plays with pace in such a dramatic way that its final chorus sounds climatic and thrilling—a march that pushes past the coming retrograde.

Despite much of Pouty’s unbridled, unironic joy (the beaming California-escapism track “TV on TV” is another such example), there is still some unresolved chaos in Gagliardi’s life. In that regard, some of Forgot About Me doesn’t totally explore much beyond the uncertainty. The heavy pace of ”I Can’t See It” grunges along to a payoff that doesn’t appear; much better is “Denial is a Heavy Drug,” a chipper-sounding depressive hard-rock track—the sonic equivalent of sending a text to a friend that says, “life is worthless lol :).” Mourning a lost friend, Gagliardi uses her voice as her coping mechanisms, turning “Denial is a Heavy Drug” into a song you can scream out loud by yourself when the world is caving in: “There’s nothing left to believe in / Is there anything left to give a shit about?” Gagliardi sings. Her band operates as emotional support, underscoring her rage and despair with distorted, pounding riffs and a racing drumbeat.

Maybe that stable camaraderie, which has been ever-present throughout much of Gagliardi’s career thus far, is the lost, aging antidote—or, at least, something to fill in the gaps while you all worry about growing older. It’s nice to have company as you go through sharp growing pains, even if you’re both having them. As Gagliardi drawls on the slinky album closer “Underwear,” “The way you look makes me feel sick / Because I realize I’m getting older too,” these existential fears probably won’t stop—but they can be stymied, processed and eventually, here on Forgot About Me, put to music.

Rachel Saywitz is a freelance culture writer and critic based in NYC. You can find them at @thatchicksaywat on Twitter.