Editor’s note: This record contains graphic content and strong language. Consider your environment when you press play.
Peaches
Rub
Stream to Sept. 25
Fierce, phenomenal, filthy and full of middle fingers to conventional thinking, stereotypes of femininity and gendered expectations, Rub is an electrifying and powerful new record from Peaches, a.k.a. Merrill Nisker, the woman who just might save us all. Listen to the stream above and pre-order Rub here.
Since her debut album (as Peaches), 2000's The Teaches of Peaches, Nisker has been a hero to electronic musicians and producers, feminists, gender upenders, queer and trans communities and countless other artists, deviants and DIYers. She counts Feist and Chilly Gonzales among her friends and frequent collaborators, and she’s become the heir-apparent to Berlin’s underground electro-art punk scene since relocating there more than a decade ago.
Rub’s backdrop is relentless beats, the thumping and pumping of a million hearts racing and pounding together. The urgency and momentum drop in and out, but because of the driving percussive elements, digital and otherwise, it feels deeply human, raw and primal.
Now, let’s talk about sex. Be it the overtly titled "Dick in the Air," to the more subtle "Pickles," Rub utilizes, praises, satirizes and simulates sex in ways that are genuinely inspired and thrilling, both lyrically and sonically. "Vaginoplasty" is raucous, raunchy and righteous, a staccato, rave-ready number, and "Rub," the title track, is a pulsing celebration of female masturbation. It’s likely that the record will spark the usual onslaught of morally righteous condemnation pointed Peaches' way. But the outrage directed at Peaches is also indicative of our culture.
There’s a vehement and palpable backlash against outspoken women — all women, actually, but the focus here is on the women who take up space that's not seen as traditionally theirs to dominate. Women with agency and autonomy; women’s bodies and sexuality; women in the spotlight; women who centre themselves in the spotlight; women who make their own light and build the damn stage, only to tear it down over and over and over with the ferocity of their art.
Perverse, vulgar, shocking, pornographic, risqué, raunchy, grotesque, provocative. These are all words that are launched at Nisker like explosives, words loaded with tacit demands for apology or humiliation or silence. But those words are also incendiary affirmations and declarations of freedom. When "perverse" and "shocking" and "pornographic" are used as tools of shame, Peaches shows up packing fists full of middle fingers and 15 years' worth of fans who have found inspiration and empowerment in her songs and stamina.
Rub is also, at least in parts, a break-up record. The quiet rage in "Free Drink Ticket" isn’t just in Nisker’s dark, deadened, spoken-word delivery, but also the deep growl of the double bass. It’s a devastating track, but it’s also deeply cathartic and candid. Questions of accountability and character and integrity permeate this record. The throughline is a familiar journey to almost everybody: re-establishing a sense of self after one of those identity-diminishing heartbreaks.
That rebuilding comes in doses. "Light in Places," the lead single, starts with stealthy beats, like a cat prowling, gradually filling out to the almost ethereal chorus as Nisker sings over and over, "I got light in places/ you didn’t know it could shine." "Dumb F--k," the second-to-last track, is almost gregarious, a gloriously assured kiss-off that finds Nisker almost fondly recalling her ex’s shortcomings against a disco-lite beat.
The final track, "I Mean Something," is Nisker’s phoenix rising, reborn, solid again after being temporarily uprooted. Her old friend and roommate, Feist, offers up an almost ghostly chorus: "Whatcha gotta say doesn’t matter anymore/ whatcha gotta do, gotta do?" But it’s Nisker’s declaration throughout, repeated on the first and third verse, that’s Rub’s most vital and provocative assertion: "I mean something, I mean something.”"
Tracklist:
1. "Close Up"
2. "Rub"
3. "Dick in the Air"
4. "Pickles"
5. "Sick in the Head"
6. "Free Drink Ticket"
7. "How You Like My Cut"
8. "Vaginoplasty" feat. Simmone Jones
9. "Light in Places"
10. "Dumb F--k"
11. "I Mean Something" feat. Feist
Hang out with me on Twitter: @_AndreaWarner
by Andrea Warner via Electronic RSS
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