Terrified is not a feeling one would expect that you would hear from shock-rocker Peaches’ mouth. But terrified she is. Excited but terrified. Why? The sexed up electropunk is going back to flying solo for Peaches upcoming shows in Australia, including rocking the regional socks off of the Groovin the Moo crowds.

“I’m looking forward to performing alone again. It terrifies me, but I think it’s really good, as an intense experience for everyone involved.”

The former musical theatre nut (we’ll get to that) turned drum machine playing provocateur has been wowing crowds with a variety of backing bands such as the German rock band Sweet Machine and her collection of grrl riot punks (including Le Tigre’s andro-babe JD Samson) she dubbed the Herms.

This time she’s returning to her roots: lustily rapping, singing and gyrating all over her adoring crowd, rarely seen solo since her groundbreaking debut The Teaches of Peaches and rocking follow-up Fatherfucker.

“It is very stripped down…my first shows [for] my first two albums were just me, [and] then, I had a band. It worked with the music.”

For Peaches not only returning to solo performing but also getting into regional audiences will be her challenge. The Groovin the Moo festival will be travelling to Oakbank, Bunbury, Bendigo, Maitland and Townsville and Canberra featuring along with her Hilltop Hoods, The Preatures, Ball Park Music and Charli XCX. So what does Peaches think of her upcoming audiences?

“I’m really excited because my shows tend to be in cosmopolitan cities,” Peaches explains.

“They’re all like,” she affects a snooty accent: “oh yes I know all about her.”

“I’m sure it [Groovin the Moo] will just be a huge fun party.”

“I think it’s really exciting to go to places where people don’t actually experience real live music experience, like a concert or festival,” Peaches explained.

“I’m sure it [Groovin the Moo] will just be a huge fun party.”

And Peaches has had her share of parties. Since her last album I Feel Cream and its tour, Peaches has been mainly doing DJ sets so the return to her own music is going to be a refreshing return. 

“Since I started, which was like 15 years ago,” she dramatically announces, “DJ culture was like one person on stage and mostly just a bunch of lights. You don’t get the personality of the person. Although the DJ would say, “my music is my personality.”

“I wanna give a live experience that has to do with interaction with a human. That for me is important, that’s what I can bring to the table.”

Peaches’ musical journey has been one of insane dichotomies. From her days as Mermaid Café, the Fancypants Hoodlum album (under her birth name of Merrill Nisker) and after her international success touring with Elastica (inspiring the then uninitiated MIA to the Roland 505), she broke all expectations when she did a one-woman version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar. She re-baptised it Peaches Christ Superstar, upped the glam rock and showed off a killer set of pipes that hadn’t been hugely present in her albums.

So when she got the chance to write and direct her own show, Peaches Does Herself, it was surprising to see it was not only a display of her own work, but also a homecoming for her first love: music theatre.

“What’s really zeitgeisty and interesting for me is way back when I was a little girl in junior high I wanted to be a theatre director, for cool musicals,” she revealed. Cue shock.

“I did end up going to school for theatre directing. Then ended up dropping out. That’s how I got into music. You could be your own writer, director everything.”

“So full-circle you know, twenty-five years later I get asked by a theatre to do a production. And I’m like “my whole last ten years and earlier, have been up to this moment to developing this cool musical I could direct,” she describes as if she found treasure. The impact of achieving her childhood dream still seems to warm her heart as she elaborates, ‘it blows my mind. I never ever told anybody I was in theatre school.”

But the prospect of directing and performing was not without its immediate problem. What was the story going to be?

“When the theatre asked me I was like “oh should I do it?” Because I am also not a fan of the jukebox musical, where you make a whole new story with songs that already have a strong story to them.”

Peaches Does Herself was described as an anti-jukebox musical. It did use Peaches back catalogue and opens with her high and horny making beats in her bedroom on her trusty Roland 505. But the autobiographical moves to extreme genderfuck fantasy as she goes through sexual reassignment surgery (she performs most of the show with a pair of gargantuan breasts and prominent penis coloured gold), has an unspoken love affair with trans adult star Danni Daniels and gets inspiration from the Naked Cowgirl, Sandy Kane’s, firey nipples.

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“It was great for me to do something that was something without any talking, and try to form a narrative out of all my albums by deconstructing them.”

What Peaches really has deconstructed though throughout her career is her audience. She has defied expectations on sexuality for a rockstar. She’s an ageless, pansexual, genderfucker who is never known to shy away from explicit depictions of sex positivity.

So when queried about the backlash openly sexual mass appeal performers such as Madonna or Miley Cyrus receive, Peaches plays diplomat.

“I always feel like if you don’t take control of your sexual opinions, it’ll come back to you. Or if you’re young you may be sexualised even if you don’t have a perspective.”

“I particularly thought about that before I started.”

Owning her sexual opinion and never really changing is what has kept Peaches to be an iconic and valued performance artist. No album has shied away from exploring her sexuality. But Peaches is never one to diss, and has some positive words for her mainstream counterparts:

“I mean someone like Miley Cyrus who came from Disney, her live show is incredible. She’s all like, “I just picked some dingleberries out of my butt I don’t care,” I’m being terribly eloquent aren’t I?’ she affectionately cackles.

As a queer icon, Peaches is subverts heteronormative culture. Not only in her own display of gender, where androgyny and self-proclaimed ‘hermaphrodite envy’ reign supreme. Recent trans and genderfuck visibility owe much to Peaches making it more appealing but she is quick to say ‘it goes way back.’

‘”It’s incredible that goes so far back. I was recently involved in a movie called Desire will set you free in Berlin. It really touches on all the genderfuck.”

“They asked me to do a song, and an old song from the 20s in Berlin. We found this artist called Claire Waldoff who had a song called “Hannelore”.

“It goes “Hannelore, Hannelore coolest kid from Kreuzberg. No one can understand if she’s a woman or a man,” she coos in her Canadian drawl, dropping into acerbic German since she made Berlin her home just when she released her debut.

So what with all she’s been doing, you’d think Peaches wouldn’t have time to prepare her next album, but arriving it is and she drops a hint or two of what it brings.

“I like to call it the postgender album,’ she unveiled. ‘I mean there’s all these things saying, “let’s get there [postgenderism]” and I’m saying, “we’re there”.

“Let’s just be in this postgender world.”

It is how Peaches has always worked, she breaks the boundaries and you follow her, she won’t be changing her act just because you are uncertain or unsure.

“It’s classic me [Peaches],” she says with an audible grin.

Get the cream and tuck in, Peaches is back, sweeter and more intense than ever.

Peaches Sideshows

Wednesday, 29th Aril 2015
The Bakery, Perth
Tickets: The Bakery

Friday, 1st May 2015
The Hi-Fi, Melbourne
Tickets: The Hi-Fi

Wednesday, 6th May 2015
The Hi-Fi, Brisbane
Tickets: The Hi-Fi

Friday, 8th May 2015
The Hi-Fi, Sydney
Tickets: The Hi-Fi

Also appearing at Groovin The Moo

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