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Taste sensationPeaches pairs up with primo producers,
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“Uh-oh,” says Peaches, “I just put a big piece of bread in my mouth. Sorry.” Replace the word “bread” with, say, “ass” and that could easily be a Peaches lyric. But no, Ms. Merrill Nisker was just grabbing lunch when the Mirror reached her at the Scala club in Berlin, where she was rehearsing with her band ahead of their European tour. I Feel Cream is her new record, a tight, polished package of beats, rhymes and melodies featuring a few tunes that, in a world without modern-day payola, would fit right in on the radio. “Lose It,” produced by Simian Mobile Disco and featuring some deluxe falsetto, is one such song while “Billionaire,” featuring foul-mouthed rapping by Peaches and Yo Majesty’s Shunda K., reminds us that this is indeed the same woman responsible for “Fuck the Pain Away.” But she’s come a long way since 2000’s The Teaches of Peaches, and on her fourth album, there are all kinds of tricks and treats up her sleeve and down her pants. “We never really actually wrote for a Peaches album together,” she says, referring to her friend Gonzales, who co-wrote four songs on I Feel Cream. “It was so fun and so easy ’cause we know each other so well.” Gonzales, aka Chilly Gonzales, aka Jason Beck—who tried to break the Guinness World Record for longest concert performance in France this week—also co-wrote six songs on the last two Feist records, but his history with Peaches goes back to the mid-’90s, when they were in the bands the Shit and Feedom together in their native Toronto. A decade ago, they led the Canadian “electro-crap” exodus to Europe, followed by fellow solo performers Mocky, Taylor Savvy and Feist, who used to perform alongside Peaches as “Bitch Lap Lap.” Peaches also turned to newer friends for contributions to I Feel Cream, from the pack of directors who’ve made videos for every song on the record to the mixtape skills of Drums of Death to further production by Digitalism and Soulwax. Peaches travelled to work with the latter two, preferring long train rides to long-distance collaboration. “I need to be part of the music,” says Peaches. “I’m not interested in them sending me a beat, I’m too much of a control freak.” Still the star of the show, unlike other singers in her field who often allow themselves to be moulded by their producers and labels, Peaches wrote and produced most of this record herself, and reigned over its conception and orchestration—from instrumentation to vocal technique to lyrics, which reveal more tenderness than Peaches connoisseurs are accustomed to. “I wanted to have no guitars, I wanted to work with dance producers that I like so that I could also concentrate more on songwriting and melody,” she says. “And I sang, which is something that I’ve always been able to do but never really did ’cause I didn’t want that to be the focus of what I do. I had a very direct approach and a style that I was very adamant about, so I established myself that way. I’m really happy that I can let out that secret weapon on my fourth album. And also, I’m always talking about pushing boundaries, so now I’m pushing boundaries on the vulnerable side.” WITH DRUMS OF DEATH AT CLUB |
