As proved by her fervent crowds at recent Australian festivals like Spilt Milk and Falls, Peach PRC is fast soaring to the top of the country’s pop music food chain. The seeds of her rabid fandom were sown on TikTok, where the Eora/Sydney native posts loveably unhinged snippets of her day-to-day, maniacally laughing at herself as she stumbles up the staircase that is modern life for the young Australian.
Unlike many others that attempt the leap from social media stardom to the music mainstream, Peach stuck the landing without breaking a sweat. Her game plan was simple: take the soul-baring honesty of her vlogs and combine it with ultra-sharp pop songwriting. Her breakout hit was 2021’s ‘Josh’, an equally searing and sugary middle-finger to an overbearing ex, which she chased a few months later with ‘Symptomatic’, a song about the turbulence of living with chronic mental illness.
This bold contrast felt deliberate: a declaration of Peach’s strength as a woman of multitudes, able to craft infectious pop bangers with themes both classic and challenging. Two years on, her artistry has been slightly refined: debut EP ‘Manic Dream Pixie’ oscillates freely between light and dark, but with a clear, cohesive vision that shows masterful intent. And while she revels in the quirks of the “manic pixie dream girl” trope its title was inspired by, the six-track record still skilfully positions Peach as a well-rounded, world-building storyteller.
Though they never quite hit the highs of club-primed belters like ‘God Is A Freak’ and ‘Forever Drunk’, all the songs on ‘Manic Dream Pixie’ are sharply written, beautifully sung and tightly produced, the whole affair surging with colour and infectious buoyancy. ‘Loved You Before’ is the strongest showcase of her narrative skills, telling the tale of an eon-spanning romance via downright adorable lyrics (“I bet we were a couple’ bugs / Just livin’ in the mud / Happily in love, doing bug stuff”) that flow sleekly over syrupy sweet indie-pop. Love shines at the heart of this EP as a whole, with every other track approaching that theme from wildly different angles.
Opening the record is a one-two punch of bubblegum brilliance: ‘Kinda Famous’ hits hard as a shoutout to the former (and current) fangirls that reigned in MSN chatrooms and Club Penguin parties – a class Peach unashamedly belongs to – and as a riff on the classic love triangle stories that dominated teeny-bop hits in the early 2000s, ‘Perfect For You’ is an anthem for another of her circles: the closeted queer girls that pined for their straight friends.
After that, Peach regains the snarky edge that helped ‘Josh’ blow up. ‘F U Goodbye’ is its spiritual successor – a deceptively glossy gem taking aim at a comedian who gave the singer “the worst 45 seconds [she] had in [her] life” – while ‘Favourite Person’ is its direct sequel: Peach’s admission that Josh actually isn’t the coke-addled narcissist she’d made him out to be. She sings candidly: “I had to tell myself you’re toxic / Better off ’cause you’re the problem / Really I just couldn’t take it / Being hated by my favourite person.”
It shows a kind of daring maturity that helps bring ‘Manic Dream Pixie’ to a memorable close with ‘Dear Inner Child’, another follow-up to an earlier Peach tune (‘Heavy’) and a love letter to her younger self. Here, Peach proclaims her conviction to thrive not in spite of her childhood trauma, but as someone moulded by it, for better or worse. Steeped in raw, heartrending emotion, it’s a powerful reminder that Peach PRC can be silly but also serious – and remain just as compelling.
Details
- Release date: April 28
- Record label: Island Records Australia/Republic Records