The first half of Dove Cameron's debut full-length represents a new era for the Disney star turned pop provocateur—she's coming into her own not only with her music but with her sexuality. In 2022 Cameron released the ghostly "Boyfriend", a string-laden come-on that veers from slippery, seductive verses to a stomping, pleading chorus, Cameron's voice curling around itself as she refines her pitch to her potential lover. It became an unexpected hit, cementing Cameron's decision to take a moodier musical path. Alchemical: Volume 1 opens with a piano flourish that signals high pop drama on the horizon, and the song it segues into, the glitched-out "Lethal Woman", fits that bill; as Cameron, on its chorus, describes the allure of a beguiling woman who "walks like a saint, floats like an angel/Sharp like a knife under the table," a choir rises up, reflecting the combustible tension between Cameron's usual MO of "keep[ing] it casual/I'm practical" and surrendering herself to desire. That tension between propriety and pleasure animates Alchemical: Volume 1, allowing Cameron to fully lean into her goth-pop side, with sweeping strings and bone-shaking beats—whether she's sharpening her claws and preparing to "eat boys like you for breakfast" on the ravenous "Breakfast" or mourning a breakup that's left her walls and soul bare on the broken-music-box lament "FRAGILE THINGS". Cameron has made a clean break from her teen-queen past, but Alchemical: Volume 1 shows that she's not afraid to get messy when it comes to transforming big emotions into smudged-eyeliner pop gems.