But there's no doubt Peaches has captivated rock's edgy set. To them, she's a mix of Iggy Pop ... ever-edgy Peaches aims for th
But there's no doubt Peaches has captivated rock's edgy set. To them, she's a mix of Iggy Pop and Karen Finley, a stone-cold rocker hellbent on leaning on our buttons, disemboweling cliches, and delivering her sexuality in a way that illuminates rather than exploits.
These days, however, Peaches is out to burrow her music, and message, further into the belly of the average Joe. Next week she'll release "Impeach My Bush," her third and by far most accessible record. Unlike her first two disks, which she recorded with just her brilliant shriek of a voice and one squirrely synthesizer, "Bush" features a full live band and a real producer.
Perhaps going a step too far to make a point about accessibility, she recorded the album in a studio once owned by those '70s corporate rock hacks Toto.
"On the first two albums I had minimal lyrics, minimal melody, minimal music - it was all about how far I could push it," Peaches explains. "This time I wanted a full drum kit. And I wanted the guitars played through big Marshall amps."
The result sounds like the hottest, dirtiest, most gloriously tacky hard rock outbursts of the '70s: like Kiss meets Blondie in the wood-paneled rumpus room of your youth. If the sound recalls both the glory, and the cliches, of classic rock, Peaches upends expectations by delivering her gender-bending lyrics with a conviction that transcends the typical rock 'n' roll tease.
Take "Two Guys (For Every Girl)." Here Peaches turns the old Beach Boys slogan "Two girls for every boy" inside out - with lyrics like "Just one thing I can't compromise/I want to see you work it, guy on guy/I want to see you boys get down with each other/I want to see you do your little nasty brother."
"Girls can kiss girls and no one cares," Peaches says. "But with two guys it's like 'Dude, don't get too close to me!' That's a big fear. I wanted to question that. In fact, I want to question everything."
It took her a long time to figure out how to do so. The 39-year-old singer, born Merrill Nisker, grew up as a self-described Jewish-American Princess. She spent years as a music teacher and hippie-esque folk singer knocking around her native Toronto.
Later, she worked with some louder rock bands in Canada. But the artist says she only found her true muse by accident. It was after the other members of her last band moved away - and upon trying to re-create their sound on her own - that she ended up with her current electro-clash style. "It clicked more than anything else I'd done," Peaches says.
She took her name from a reference in a Nina Simone song, "Four Women." Her debut CD, "The Teaches of Peaches," appeared in 2000. She followed that with an album titled "Fatherf-er" in 2003.
Unsurprisingly, Peaches got lots of attention for both her look and her music. Iggy Pop invited her to perform on one of his albums. So did Pink. But when she opened a European tour for Marilyn Manson, fans weren't having it. "I managed to shock the shock-rocker's crowd," she says with pride.
As you may imagine, Peaches continues to freak some people out. But, she says, "That's part of rock 'n' roll. A lot of that element has been lost in music. When you watch music TV these days, it's all about how to get rich, not about being dangerous. Even 'My Super Sweet 16' is about getting money. You're 16! My God, you should be raising hell!"
Peaches is raising more than enough for all of them. But despite the sexual outrageousness of her lyrics, the singer insists the real subject of her words lies elsewhere. "They're mostly about questioning power roles and authority," she says. "It's just that a lot of power roles have a sexual connotation. Even religion is based on sex - on manipulating it."
Yet Peaches maintains that what she has to say about sex and power shouldn't threaten anybody. And instead of seeing herself as a voice for sexual outsiders, she says her real mission is to help those with the most perceived power in society: straight men.
"They're the only ones in society who haven't had a liberation movement," Peaches explains. "Women had one. Gay men and lesbians had one. But when straight males had what they thought was a sexual revolution in the '70s, it was just so they could (have sex with) more women.
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