Crème de la Cream Issue #40

Peaches is back, and she's found Jesus

By Tatyana Kagamas
Published: September 1st, 2009 | 12:00am

A canon of sexually explicit lyrics, live shows bordering on orgiastic, and a general fuck-all attitude have granted Peaches both fans and enemies. Merrill Beth Nisker’s fourth album under the moniker was released in May, and much like its predecessors, 2003’s Fatherfucker and 2006’s Impeach My Bush, she isn’t parsing words. I Feel Cream sees the artist dropping the rock elements attributed to her signature electroclash sound in favor of a largely more electronic album. But the 40-year-old singer proves that she’s still got a lot of rocknroll attitude.

VZ: It’s been about three years since your last album, what have you been doing since then?

“I made the last album and went on tour for a year after. Then, um, just living — thinking up new albums, just living my life, doing projects, doing performance art projects and art installations and a lot of DJ-ing and just being involved in other ways.”

VZ: Some of the songs on your new album were co-written by Gonzalez. How did you get involved with him?

“We’ve been really good friends for the past 15 years and we used to have a band together before he was Gonzalez ... we used to write songs together for this band, but we never wrote songs together for my album before, so we thought it would be fun. We wrote really fast because he knows me really well. I think the most successful song we wrote together was “Talk to Me” because he brought up something that angers me, and since I told him I wanted to write like a soul thing, he told me, “Think about that thing.” Then I started playing drums and singing, and he was like, “I’m going play one of your bass lines that you love to play.” So he was just kind of helping me and getting things rolling which was cool because usually I do everything alone.”

VZ: On your last album, you Also collaborated with other people…

“Yeah, but the way I collaborated was different because I had made all the beats and everything … This time I actually collaborated on the music. I went to people’s studios and stuff like that. It’s people that we wanted to work together. They’re my peers — it’s people that I DJ with, people that I play with.”

VZ: Given the success of the last album, did you feel any more pressure with the release of this album?

“No, I feel like I can really do whatever the fuck I want. I [feel] less pressure to do everything myself because I’ve already proven that. So it was actually fun. Actually, the impetus came when I thought of Madonna’s new album and the weird choices she made of people to work with — I mean they’re good people, but she could’ve worked with all these up-and-coming amazing people — like she could’ve worked with me, she could’ve worked with Digitalism, Simian Mobile Disco. It just kind of seemed like she wasn’t getting it anymore.”

VZ: Do you ever feel pressure to make things more shocking or explicit with each record?

“No. I never feel like I’m being shocking or explicit. I just feel like I’m being me and everybody else calls me shocking or explicit or ‘she’s not so shocking or explicit.’”

VZ: How did you start doing your performances?

“It started because I just had a machine and it was just me on stage. It’s kind of a reaction to purists. When I started 10 years ago, people were more purists, like ‘Rock! We don’t like electronic music! That’s the ‘80s!’ I was like, ‘Fuck that it’s all the same thing.’ So I wanted to bring more rock attitude to dance music because there were all these people doing electronic music but just twiddling knobs.”

VZ: So by “rock attitude” you mean more like performance?

“Yeah, performances and just like, riff-based stuff. Loud annoying sounds. You can get really amazing sounds going [with electronic music], it’s more metal than metal.”

VZ: Have you had any problems with aggressive audiences at shows?

“People try to grab me and forget that I’m human. So I grab them back and tell them to fuck off.”

VZ: Does that change the dynamic of your performances?

“It depends how aggressive they get. I’ll stop the show and rat them out and make them leave.”

VZ: But in general, when you’re playing shows the audience is pretty receptive?

“I have a really good audience. I love my audience. They’re very open and very nice. There’s always some jerk that can spoil it, but hopefully I can literally nip it in the bud right there.”

VZ: Who do you write your music for and what are you trying to accomplish?

“I write my music for me and what I want to hear. Sometimes it’s in response to certain mainstream pop ideas that I don’t feel are evenly represented and sometimes it’s just writing a good song. But it’s always about writing a good song first.”

VZ: What mainstream pop ideas do you feel like you’re trying to address most?

Gender and sexuality? “Yeah, all that. What we expect. I’m sorry if I don’t answer this correctly, but I called my album Fatherfucker so that should answer the question.”

VZ: Song-wise how do you think that you’ve evolved?

“I think that with Teaches of Peaches I wrote very direct sounds, very stark electronics, and just seemed to evolve in a really good way. There’s always more technology available, so I just learn more. I never thought I’d be an electronic musician.”

VZ: Do you find yourself listening to more electronic music?

“Yeah, yeah. Actually, a lot. I mean, especially with DJ-ing because I start to think about the dance floor and things, which I never thought I would do. I never thought I would DJ, never thought I’d be into certain kinds of dance music, but I really like a lot of the hard electro sounds. And I’ve started to make my own mixes for people, too. Last year I made mixes for like Ladyhawke and the B-52s so it was pretty cool.”

VZ: What have you been listening to lately?

“I don’t know, I’m listening to Jesus Christ Superstar and stuff like that.”

VZ: The musical?

“Yeah. I’m going to do it as a one-woman show next year.”

VZ: How are you going to do it?

“I already booked it in Germany. If I’m the only one in it, it should be pretty minimal. Gonzalez is going to play all the music. He loves that musical as much as I do. He’s going to play all the music, and I’m going to sing all the parts.”