The reaches of Peaches

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/09/2016 (3659 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In the six years between 2009’s I Feel Cream and 2015’s Rub, Peaches kept herself very busy.

She wrote, composed and starred in the electro-rock opera Peaches Does Herself, which included material from her first four albums arranged as a semi-autobiographical narrative. It was adapted into a film of the same title which premièred at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2012 before being screened at more than 60 festivals around the world in the following two years. She sang the title role in a production of Monteverdi’s 17th-century opera L’Orfeo in Berlin. She performed a one-woman version of Jesus Christ Superstar and she collaborated with photographer Holger Talinski for the book What Else Is In the Teaches of Peaches.

“It was a way of me getting my ya-yas out — singing opera, doing a movie and singing Jesus Christ Superstar as a one-woman show was a way of me not including that in the album at all, so that wouldn’t be a part of it,” says the Toronto-born electroclash artist, who plays the Pyramid Cabaret on Friday, Sept. 23. “It was a way of enjoying myself, but it’s not really a part of the Peaches show that I’m doing when I make an album.”

But then came the time to focus on the creation of her fifth album, Rub, a record that continues to build on the themes and ideas Peaches (née Merrill Nisker) has spent her 15-year career unapologetically hurtling into the musical atmosphere — gender identity, leftist politics, sex and sexuality.

“I think it’s my best album, I think it has some really classic Peaches-style tracks like Rub and Vaginoplasty, very classic Peaches,” she says. “But then you have stuff like Free Drink Ticket, which is probably my most emotional, vulnerable and angry and poetic track that I’ve written.”

For more than a year, Peaches spent 10 hours a day with friend Vince Cooler in her Los Angeles garage studio making beats, choosing the ones that stuck and fleshing them out into fully-formed songs. Each song from the record is anticipated to have its own video directed by Peaches, with with seven of the 11 tracks already being accounted for. The videos, too, could be deemed “classic Peaches,” complete with dynamic costuming, creative storylines that inject her signature sense of humour and, of course, many depictions of various genitalia.

The video for Close Up features Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, who also sang on the track — one of three collaborations on the album, which also includes I Mean Something with Feist and Vaginoplasty with Simmone Jones.

“Sometimes you want things to work out and they don’t, and sometimes Kim Gordon shows up in your garage, or Feist, and then it works out,” Peaches says of the collaborations.

An even larger collaboration came in the form Rub Remixed, on which, as the name suggests, the entirety of Rub was remixed by a host of producers, all of whom are women, chosen by Peaches.

“There’s a lot of producers I respected, some of them that I loved what they were putting out and some that I don’t think got enough respect, so it was nice to pick so many people and make a whole double album out of it instead of just a few songs and having to pick a few people,” she says.

Peaches has been touring the album for about a year, but just launched the latest leg of her journey a few weeks ago; though the music videos provide a window into the visual art she brings to the table, for fans, the live experience is something not to be missed. Peaches notes she and her crew have rejigged her stage show recently, saying, “there’s quite a development.”

“We loved the show before, but it’s important to look at it and be critical and to blow some minds again,” she says.

erin.lebar@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @NireRabel