An outsider of Pittsburgh may be able to tell a few general things about our city (the bridges, the sports teams, the bus that sunk in the comically large pothole, etc.) but what would probably not cross their mind is the music of Pittsburgh. Despite having some great musicians from here, we are not particularly known for a booming music scene. However, there are still some great acts within the city that make it a gold mine for excellent music. Energetic Pittsburgh indie rock band Posterchild perfectly reflects this. Created in 2020, Posterchild, formed by a group of former Dice alumni, blended sounds of legendary indie acts before them such as Jeff Buckley, Radiohead, and the Strokes to make electrifying music that captures the power of being young with a passion. The band's debut to streaming services has been highly requested by the local Pittsburgh music community for years now. With the release of their debut album in 2024, Vengeance Says, it seems that those wishes are finally fulfilled. I also had the opportunity to interview Posterchild’s very own frontman and songwriter Gibson Musisko to understand more about the creation of this project.

Starting this review, I would like to recall my first time personally listening to the album. I remember refreshing Spotify at midnight when it was released. I pressed play, and instantly I was taken away by the first 30 seconds of their opening track, White Lies. The high-quality production was something that instantly stood out on my first listen. It is rare to find a band that’s not backed up by a major record label to make studio-recorded music sound so passionate. It is certainly a breath of fresh air compared to the average indie band that usually records with a laptop, guitar, and passion. In my opinion, the production quality can especially be heard in the backing vocals that occasionally appear in their songs. They’re buried in the mix meticulously and manage to invoke just a little bit more enjoyment in the music than if they were absent. I wanted to learn more about how they managed to get such a perfect take on each song, so I interviewed Musisko for more information regarding the recording process.

“We recorded it over at our guitar player, Seamus’, grandpa’s house, and turned it upside down.” Musisko said, “We knew we needed a house for a week just to get our drum track done. A goal going into the album was to have everything sound like a live feeling’, so we tried [recording] it live in the house but I was aware it wasn’t going to happen entirely. Vocals were all done in this room [the home studio].” 

While it would be nice to imagine the band getting an ideal take on every single song on the first try, there were a lot of trials and tribulations coming with the recording process. When asked about how the recording process went, Gibson quickly responded with “Kind of agonizing. We had a take of White Lies performed perfectly by everyone, and when we went to look at the computer, the file was corrupted. It was a huge morale hit. We were like ‘What are we going to do?’ Immediately it was a wake-up call that the whole album couldn’t be done live. The recording process became to delicately balance quality recordings with a live feel.” It’s clear to see how much love went into the sound of the album, which wraps up the explanation of the jarringly pristine production.

When I listen to a really good album, I tend to judge its quality based on how each individual song contributes to it. To me, it serves as a way to test how much an artist's music will stick with me after the initial listening experience. Vengeance Says serves as a strikingly memorable example of this. It was inherently obvious that each song had some kind of charm that made it stick out on the album. From the upbeat and energetic danceability of I Wanna Be Your Friend, to the pensive mountain of exposition that is Bovines On The Fence, to the slow, provocative, reverb-filled ballad of The Way It Goes, every song sounds like it could be released as a single and thrive in its own right with tons of replayability. It makes for a phenomenal collection of moments that will stick with you far after the album is over.

Something about every song shining in its own way really ties everything together and truly captures the youthful nature of this project. A perk about being a local band like Posterchild is that you’ll have songs previously established from playing them during shows consistently. Including them on your first album will make a warm welcome for all the current fans but still can put your old songs in a new light.

On the topic of this, Gibson said, “Vengeance Says is kind of like a greatest hit compilation of the last two years, and then I had to just kind of make sense of it after. When making it, we were like, ‘What do we want the listener to feel over these nine short songs?’”

In terms of actual sound, which I briefly touched on earlier, this is everything you could want in a good indie rock album. Every chorus on the album feels carefully thought out with the intent to stick in your head and it really floats around well. The instrumentation presents itself as something special too, it sounds simple enough to where you can tell the bands are having fun with it, but each instrument plays its part so effortlessly that it comes together to make a much grander and more thought-provoking sound. Bovines On The Fence is a straightforward example of this phenomenon, as the individual guitar parts can be brushed off as rather simple. However, the way that Gibson wrote the guitar parts makes the whole sound blend together and correlate well with each other, similar to what Indie Rock legend Julian Casablancas of The Strokes does. When paired up with a solid bassline and a supportive role from the drums, the listener ends up with a much larger impression of the feeling the songs are trying to evoke than if the song simply had chords and a lead riff attached to it.

Lyrically, this project carries on the feel of youth that I’ve been getting from the project in a fairly blatant way. Themes of heartbreak, vengeance, yearning, and discontent can all be observed in each song of the album. These are pretty standard topics covered in music, but the lyrics of Vengeance Says particularly stand out to me because it feels that there’s a level of irony within them that stems from simply how ear-catching the lyrics are. Whether it’s the mention of the narrator's sister being a lantern fly in Bovines On the Fence or the personification of the sun whining about his friends on TV in Tell Me Something I Don’t Know (a personal favorite lyric of mine), the lyrics stand out as playful and almost unorthodox. These more unserious lyrics clash with the choruses, which tend to drag the listener back into the main themes discussed earlier. It all makes for a very fun ride that can still open up for introspection here and there.

Gibson’s take on his lyrics is, “When you listen to the songs, there’s a lot of bitterness. Not a lot of anger, but there’s definitely a feeling of refined frustration. The words to Major Arcana were written by my father and it’s kind of a really good representation of the album songs because it’s complaining in a way that’s really appealing. You know what I mean?” In addition, he mentioned, “It [the album] doesn’t take itself seriously. And so what I wanted was for people to come away with that I had all these feelings, but I didn’t care. Like I wanted it to feel like I understood and saw the sides of these situations and it didn’t have to matter.”

Overall, Vengeance Says serves as a great piece of music that radiates the love that local bands strive to have for their work. Its carefully crafted nature makes for a great introduction to the Pittsburgh music scene and solidifies it as the current face of music from within the Steel City. The release of this project is actively fighting against the common notion that Pittsburgh doesn’t have a music scene in the most rebellious and engaging way possible, and it’s only a matter of time to see where this band goes next.