Los Angeles-duo Ill Peach bring together opposites – bitterness and sweetness, smoothness and jaggedness, tenderness and noisiness – to make their brand of pop music that's of its own kind. Eavesdropping, with its jarring seesawing between harsh and soft sounds, lyrics that are gloomy, and frontwoman Jess Corazza’s detached singing style – invoking a bit of Sleigh Bells and a bit of Billie Eillish – doesn’t aim at pop, but ultimately ends up closer to the bullseye on the pop dartboard than away from it. 
Corazza starts off the album – on “Dinner For One,” a prologue of sorts – singing, “Sometimes people’s energies are like a petri dish, full of all forms of sickness” with chilling aloofness; and off we go, with the band’s disdain for pop’s cheerfulness! But seriously, a track like “Cult Daddy” – a dark song inspired by life in an actual cult – with its abrasive guitars and jarring production effects magnifying the noise, comes nowhere near the realm of pop, but boy is it catchy!
Cuts like “Rodeo,” “Molly’s Not A Friend,” “Small Talk” and “Crash Course Dummy” are more in the conventional dance-pop territory, with catchy beats, instantly hummable choruses, and upbeat spirits, but not without the underlying bitterness to balance out the sweetness: the first three are inspired by Corazza’s life experiences – death of a parent, experiencing the grief of this loss while on a psychoactive drug, and the dislike of the fakeness that comes with small talk – and the last one is just plain sulky – “Playing outkast. On the repeat. Up spilling drinks. Stuck on the bottom. Like a feeder. No air to breathe.”
The album concludes with its strangest numbers, “Yup” and “Ashtray.” There is understated beauty in “Yup’s” sparse synths and lazy guitars and “Ashtray’s” rousing violins that does not immediately entice, just like I'll Peach itself. Call the duo grit-pop or whatever you like; they are serious pop artists deep down; you just have to get used to them.