As the year in which Jenny Hval has already declared war on “soft dick rock”, 2015 seems perfect for the return of Peaches: the electroclash shock-rock pioneer’s bass-heavy, provocative music is the diametric opposite. Rub, her first album in six years, comes as an audio and visual package: each track is accompanied by an artist-directed video featuring everything from Peaches and comedian Margaret Cho sharing a day of zany adventures while dressed in matching hand-knit body suits (complete with comically oversized, flapping penises) to performance artist Empress Stah shooting lasers from a buttplug.
It’s all just a typical day at the office for Peaches, whose lyrics - delivered straight-up in an understated, almost deadpan style - have always challenged. Sexually explicit, raw and often absurd, there are times when Rub sounds like a shopping list of flying body parts and the sexual acts that David Cameron’s last government legislated out of legal pornography. But here, too, female dominance and female pleasure play a central role - and refuse to go gently into that good night.
With the production dialled back to a minimum, the recorded versions of these songs sound sparse and almost serious, sacrificing some of the humour that drives much of Peaches’ work. In some cases it’s clearly intentional - there’s nothing funny about “Free Drink Ticket”, a scorched-earth evisceration of an ex - but for others, the accompanying videos expand the universe of the songs. I mean, this is an album that rhymes “why do you ask me” with “vaginoplasty” - on a song which neatly skewers the pursuit of somebody else’s ideal of perfection - so it’s hard to be po-faced about it. Clever use of guest appearances - a husky-voiced Kim Gordon on “Close Up”, the album’s musically minimalist, claustrophobic lead; an out-of-character Leslie Feist on the closing track - add to the mixture without overwhelming it.
Overleaf: watch Peaches and Kim Gordon in the "Close Up" video