Peaches: Confessions of a rock 'n' roll vixen

JOAN ANDERMAN
(c) 2006, The Boston Globe

MANSFIELD, Mass. - It's a sweltering summer day and Peaches has taken refuge in her air-conditioned tour bus, which is parked behind the stage at the Tweeter Center. In a few hours the 39-year-old musician will put on a corset and perform sexually explicit electro-rock songs from her new album, "Impeach My Bush," in her opening set at the Nine Inch Nails show. This afternoon she is laying supine on a leather banquette, chatting about gender politics and tugging at the sides of her dress in an effort to cover her hot pink bra.

Such a demure gesture from the fearless vixen who will shortly be gyrating through "Two Guys (For Every Girl)" is confusing. But there's a book on the table - "The Ethical Slut" - that seems to shed a little light. And there's a person called Merrill Nisker who attended an exclusive Hebrew academy and played folk music in Toronto coffeehouses before turning 30 and deciding there was more to life, and art, than fitting in. That's when Peaches was born.

"The world's problem," says Peaches, "is following blindly and fearfully instead of questioning power and questioning yourself. Maybe people think I'm extreme, but what's extreme? I think 7/8President1/3 Bush is extreme. I think not handing out condoms and spreading AIDS because you don't want people to have sex is extreme."

Peaches is obsessed with sex, at least from the sound of things. Her first album, 2000's "The Teaches of Peaches," staked out the musician's sound and philosophy with lo-fi disco manifestos like "7/8Expletive1/3 the Pain Away." "I like the innocent type/deer in the headlights," she rapped on "AA XXX." Objectifying men is one of Peaches' favorite lyrical pastimes, and not because she's a lusty dominatrix.

"I write about power roles and a lot of it is based around sex," she explains. "Religion is based around sex, around abstinence and rules. Either you're blessed with 70 virgins or you're not allowed to have sex until you get married. It's brainwashing, and I just try to sing about it as a way for people to realize that it shouldn't be such a big deal."

The title of Peaches' second album can't be printed in this newspaper (even with the help of brackets): it's a gender-related twist on a one-word derogatory term that invokes mothers, and the album cover features a photo of Peaches in a thick, flowing beard. The disc's opening track, "I Don't Give A...," loops Joan Jett's "Bad Reputation," and Jett returned the favor by contributing guitar and vocals to a track on Peaches' new album. Jett's not the only surprise guest. While both of Peaches' first two projects were one-woman booty fests, made almost exclusively with a Roland MC505 groove box, "Impeach My Bush" is a veritable musical orgy.

Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age and singer-songwriter Feist stopped by the LA recording studio to pitch in, as did Hole drummer Samantha Maloney. Maloney is also in Peaches' all-girl live band, along with former Courtney Love guitarist Radio Sloan and JD Samson from Le Tigre. And Peaches invited a pair of coproducers to join her at the helm: Mickey Petralia (known for his work with Beck, Linkin Park, and Ladytron) and Greg Kurstin, Beck's longtime touring keyboardist.

"She wore her gold bikini for most of the sessions, and she persuaded other people to wear gold bikinis, too," says Petralia. "Peaches on stage is Peaches in real life. She's intense."

It wasn't always so. Peaches, now based in Berlin, grew up in an observant Jewish home in Toronto. Popular music was so peripheral to her world that when she heard a high school friend singing harmonies, she had no idea what it was. Peaches picked up an acoustic guitar for the first time during college, and soon after began singing laid-back covers on the local folk circuit before staging one of the more radical stylistic makeovers in memory.

"I was playing folk music because all I had was an acoustic guitar and a girlfriend and we liked Melissa Etheridge and the Indigo Girls and we sang about each other," says Peaches. "We got a gig in a pub and people came and watched us and I'm like, 'Oh, I guess I'm a musician.' And I guess I can pick my path of musicianship. So I got an electric guitar and happened upon a certain group of people and I started writing."

She tried her hand at avant-jazz (self-releasing "Fancypants Hoodlum" as Merrill Nisker in 1995) and formed a short-lived noise-rock band with MC/keyboardist Chilly Gonzales, who remains a frequent collaborator. In 1998 she became roommates with Leslie Feist, a member of the Canadian collective Broken Social Scene and a solo recording artist.

"At that point she was still teaching kids in the mornings - getting them to sing songs and act out little dragon skits," recalls Feist. "But she had just bought her groove box and at night at our house there was a lot of jumping on the couch and freestyling to new beats she made."

While the Peaches persona was, at least in part, conceived and cultivated, "the impact Peach has had would be impossible if she wasn't completely honest about it," Feist says. "The very first show she did as Peaches was at the Rivoli, where I was bartending, and she wore a turtleneck sweater and pants singing '7/8Expletive1/3 the Pain Away.' "

Peaches wears a sequined burka on the cover of "Impeach My Bush," and despite the foul-mouthed content, Peaches calls it a "total mainstream pop album." In fact, it rocks. In recent years Pink and Iggy Pop have sought her out for collaborations, and Peaches seems to have drawn inspiration from both for her slicker, muscular new sound. Language, she argues, is not a problem - or at least it shouldn't be when Snoop Dogg is rapping to the masses about the same body parts, with far less humor and a lot more brutality. Plus, Peaches ponders rhetorically, is anyone complaining that AC/DC always sings about sex?

"It's what rock 'n' roll is about, being dangerous," she says. "Guys have always had that, a way to be a horny 14-year-old boy and get it out through rock 'n' roll, and girls have always been the object. I'm like, 'C'mon. Let the girls out.'"