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ELECTROCLASH
Peaches, "Impeach My
Bush" (XL Recordings) ***1/2
On her first two albums,
2002's "Teaches of Peaches" and the following year's "Fatherf---er," the
cusp-of-stardom Canadian electroclash singer and performance artist Merrill
Nisker took the stripped-down soundscapes of her Roland MC505 beat box as
far as they'd go and, one suspected, pretty much exhausted her alter ego
Peaches' ability to titillate us with scatological gender-bending. But on
her third effort, she ups the intensity of her sound with co-producers
Mickey Petralia and Greg Kurstin (both former collaborators with Beck);
enlists some help on guitars, drums, analog synths and backing vocals from
Joan Jett, Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age), Feist and Samantha Maloney
(Hole, Motley Crue), and hits a whole new level in terms of lyrical outrage.
Alternating between her
most direct political statements ever and her frankest sexual explorations
yet -- and sometimes combining the two, as evidenced by the title track --
Peaches simultaneously shocks and amuses, making anyone else exploring this
turf seem like a monk or a nun. Closer examination of songs -- such as "Two
Guys (For Every Girl)," "Rock the Shocker" and several other titles I can't
print -- isn't possible in a family newspaper, but this is hardly
pornography masquerading as something meaningful, like, say, Blender and
Maxim magazines, or two out of three mainstream summer movies. More like
that exceedingly rare, multi-leveled work that just happens to find the art
amid the X -- a veritable "Last Tango in Paris," "Midnight Cowboy" or "A
Clockwork Orange," and an unforgettable musical trip through the seedy
underbelly of our times.
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