Peaches

by Mark Asch • May 8, 2009

Peaches
I Feel Cream
(XL, 2009)

Since The Teaches of Peaches, Peaches hasn't really released a set of songs to match her shtick—that mix of abrasive minimal drum-and-synth techno, crass sexuality, and performative, almost parodically forward gender-bending antics that's earned the admiration of club kids and gender studies majors. This, arguably, doesn't matter—live, she still plays "Fuck the Pain Away" (and "Lovertits", and "Hot Rod", and "AA XXX", and…), and, like we learned in academia, just because the music's kind of meh, that doesn't make it any less fun to parse. (Even the Dean got into it: "Pro-sex post-feminism for the age of internet porn, in which thousands of women a day prove how cool they are by smiling through their semen facials." Oh, Christgau, that's not necessarily semen.)

Though I Feel Cream boasts the least amusing sexually-tinged album title in the Peaches catalog, it does feature several of Merrill Beth Nisker's best tunes in nearly a decade, along with the usual heapings of empowering dom-sub role-playing.

Role-playing, particularly sexually empowering role-playing, has arguably never been entirely beside the point of dance music, so it makes sense that Peaches, of all people, should try on genres for size in her latest tract. "Serpentine" (as in "never a straight line") is indeed snaky, supple, and slender, with a tricky drum machine, minimal (though sorta farty) synths, and lyrics murmured with innate confidence: "Staring at my ass and my beard and my mustache… Hair in a mullet, you know you gotta love it / So sexual and so conceptual." (Part of the fun of liking Peaches is seeing if you can sing along without cracking up.)

To read the rest, make the jump.

Crawdaddy! was founded by Paul Williams in 1966 and was the first U.S. magazine of rock criticism. John Lennon, Cameron Crowe, P.J. O'Rourke and many others have contirubted to its pages, and it is currently owned by Wolfgang's Vault, home to the legendary rock promoter Bill Graham's archive.