I’m ambivalent about describing Berlin-based pop artist Peaches as “sexually explicit.” The term feels loaded, and really, more people should take notes from Peaches, whose sex-positive, gender-blending jams hinge on the joys of sex even as they exude an air of darkness.
Her 2000 breakthrough, “Fuck the Pain Away,” pulsates with a minimal groaning drum pattern and blown-out electronic cymbals that hit like they’ve been laid out by a firing squad. Her recent photo book for Akashic, What Else Is in the Teaches of Peaches, takes its title from that breakout underground hit, though she’s grown since “Fuck the Pain Away.” Rub (I U She Music) is Peaches’s sixth album—her first in six years—and it’s polished and dynamic even as Peaches is in the throes of a dark, postindustrial thrust.
It’s raunchy as fuck, too. As Peaches throws down dance-pop that sounds like it could land on the radio, she flips the gender roles we’re so used to hearing in pop songs. On the third track she sing-raps about switching those positions, encouraging all the dudes in the crowd to put their dicks in the air. The song is called, naturally, “Dick in the Air.”
Deap Vally opens. 10/17, 9 PM, Metro, $26, $23 in advance. 18+