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LA-based ill peach is the indie-pop trifecta of high-school friends Jess Corazza, Pat Morrissey and Jesse Schuester from Minnesota. Their sophomore album EAVESDROPPING is an explosive juggernaut of connection through the lens of overheard deliciously messy dialogue played out and is an exploration of not only complex relationships between people, but the chaos and catharsis found in ill peach’s sonic identity. We had the amazing opportunity to chat with ill peach on the recording process for EAVESDROPPING, grief, and the evolution of where their sound will evolve next. 

OnesToWatch: Last time we chatted, you were fresh off your debut EP. Since then, you’ve released a full-length album and officially expanded into a trio. How has that shift from a duo to a trio changed your group’s dynamic?

Jess Corazza: Jesse has always been a part of this project and behind the scenes, and it felt natural to add him into our dynamic. He’s also our childhood best friend so we already had this great chemistry that worked well.

Jesse Schuster: The funny thing is while it feels official now, I’ve been in the ill peach universe for quite some time! We’ve all been friends for decades and I was playing guitar on tracks on some previous tracks on our past album. To be honest, it’s like when you’re dating someone for a while but you aren’t official; there’s that moment where you’re just like, should we just call this what it is? Ultimately that’s how it felt to me, and I still try to respect that Pat and Jess have their own vision and taste, lean into their vision (particularly Jess) and help support and chase those sounds down. 

Writing for major artists requires a certain level of polish and structure as seen in your work with SZA and Weezer. Are there any habits you have to unlearn when you are working on your own projects? 

Jess Corazza: When we’re writing together it can feel like a playground, versus writing for other people it can feel like I am going to work today and I need to be of service to that artist and be an open vessel to go along with (that artist’s) vision and voice. It can be kind of like a therapy session sometimes. As a writer you have to be super down to just get into the grit with them and compose a song out of it. And sometimes those personal things that can overlap and make a songwriter and artist really thrive and make a magical moment and other times you have to take other’s experiences (which I haven’t experienced) and put it into a 3-minute song. 

Pat Morrissey: In sessions writing with other people you’re of service to that other artist and sharpening that muscle, and skill set on how to craft that song and production. For me a lot of it is on the production side when I work with other artists, but it’s certainly different when I get in a room with Jess (and Schuster). It’s a different type of expression and a lot of searching for how the three of us can express ourselves as a collective. It’s experimenting, collaborating and throwing to the wall and seeing what sticks. It’s Jess’s voice that ties everything together. I’ve also been in k-pop for the last few years which is very different from ill peach, and a lot of it is knowing what works and what doesn’t and ultimately comes down to taste. 

Jess, you’ve mentioned that this project was shaped by the loss of your father, and with that the record radiates this incredible, colorful energy. How did the process of making this album help you translate that grief into something that feels so vibrant and alive?"

Jess Corazza: It was a trippy experience, and it was such a devastating loss. Your parents are like the pillar of your life and I was on shaky ground. Being in the middle of this project gave me a great escape from it in moments. There were moments where we’d sit down and I’d start writing something and it was too dark, too heavy and too sad and we had to stay with the concept we were working on for this album. We hadn’t done a concept album with each other, and it allowed me to compartmentalize a bit. Grief is crazy, it's not linear, and you can look at life in one aspect and it’s heavy as hell and super sad, but I think it allowed me to view life from a different lens while writing this project.

Listening to Eavesdropping there’s a 'controlled chaos' feel to the project—it’s so diverse and atmospheric but has this really great structure. What did the recording process look like to achieve that balance and that sound?

Pat Morrissey: Yeah, definitely going into the album we knew we wanted to have a certain energy that had some teeth to it and was rough around the edges, and our own version of emo. Distortion, guitar and ultimately was off the wall that was not too serious. Not to speak for Jess but during that time, we wanted to create something that was opposite to what she was experiencing at the time. Anything that was exaggerated, embellished, unhinged and raw but also keeping it bright. We always think that everything should have a wink to it, or a sarcastic edge and those were things we were discussing while we were in the studio. It was always centered on exploration and playing in the sand and just going from there. 

Jesse Schuster: You didn’t mention eclecticness, but when it comes to the general sound of ill peach, Pat is a spaz. There’s a great improvising energy, and there’s a lot of restless playfulness, and a lot of that is Pat. That restlessness gives us a lot of unpredictability.

Jess Corazza: I would say that’s our sound in general, like what you said, that controlled chaos. For a while we were unsure if that was too challenging for the listener, but we got notes from fans that it was not. The throughline is my voice connecting and that’s what makes it so fun and colorful. It’s very hard to stamp us with one genre, and that would be boring honestly. 

I’d love to talk about how you guys shaped the tracklist for the project. I also need to shout out that the transition of “Crumbs” into “All I Dream About Sleep” complements each other so well. 

Jess Corazza: Honestly it is one of the hardest things to do once you have the project completed, just trying to weave it altogether and make it feel fresh on the ears and exciting. For this album we did a few iterations of it, and each of us moved the songs around a bit and we’d just go on a drive to the mountains and listen to all of it, and sit with it for a minute, probably for too long. It’s trial and error and moving things around to see where they fit with each other.

Pat Morrissey: As we came up with this concept we had this idea to start the album with what became “DINNER FOR ONE”, let’s put the listener right into the scene of the movie where you’re at the table by yourself for dinner, listening in on conversations around you at the different tables. A little bit of an on the nose take for eavesdropping, but for Jess it’s like an addiction. When we go to restaurants she just prefers to listen to the table next to her than the one she’s at. And yeah, the concept came from that, we started with “DINNER FOR ONE” and kept an arc through the album. We knew we wanted to end with “ASHTRAY” because that is a segway to the next album, and kept writing songs that were darker and more aligned with what Jess was going through at the time, and she said that was for the next album. “ASHTRAY” was the outlier and getting darker and more serious. 

Jess Corazza: Yeah if you listen to “DINNER FOR ONE” it sets that scene. “CRUMBS” is based on this crazy couple that was trying to break up but were just so obsessively touching each other and clearly toxic with each other. “ALL DAY I DREAM ABOUT SLEEP” is about the bartender having to listen to them for an hour, and being so exhausted from serving you. The album weaves together these characters that made it feel like an interesting narrative. I feel like “ASHTRAY is this other side of us that is challenging us to write an emotional song and this next album I have in mind came to me how Eavesdropping had. 

During the week that my father died I had a very creative surge, thinking ahead to the next album and its’ space where we can explore these more emotional songs; I also don’t want to go from a very bright colorful project to pure heaviness. We are going to find a way to express and bring that brightness into that future project as well. That’s what’s been fun about this album, we took from our experiences especially performing live and thought about it in a different way, where we know that when we tour and play live this resonates with our fans it still has to be energy driven. “ASHTRAY” is a nice example if we wanted to get real emo that's where we go.

Jesse Schuster: The album was written before it’s ever been performed so obviously that stuff changes, and once we perform these songs live that can potentially inform a lot of things based on how you feel. I’m at the point with the project that listening to the album I am excited and pumped. There’s still so much natural inspiration in the mood and sound of our music, to me if we started not too far from where we’ve been at sonically, it’s still so fun. That’s my two cents on it.

Jess Corazza: Totally. I feel like we unlocked another part of ill peach. Similar to your question about working with other artists. I don’t want to use the word formulaic but it’s sort of like that where all of sudden you can unlock this part of your brain and tap into that which we did for this album.I agree with Jesse, we won’t stray too far from the sonic landscape of it but where we’re going with the context of the next album it’s where I can put a lot of these emotions of grief. 

What’s next this year for illpeach?

Jess Corazza: We’re already working on the next album to just stay ahead of it. And on top of that each of us individually have our own things going on, Jesse is touring a lot with other projects, and Pat is working with other artists, myself similarly. We try to keep a nice balance with our band but also we’re stretching our arms out in the industry. 

Thanks for chatting with us!