More about: Peaches

Peaches puts on a show like no other. The electroclash icon treats music performance as a plaything: it’s mouldable, something to be experimented with, something to take the piss out of, even. Peaches uses a stage to vividly bring to life her wildest ideas. With each song comes a new costume, a new ridiculous concept; a new layer of the weird onion that is Peaches is peeled back each time.

Tonight at London's Southbank Centre as part of Grace Jones' Meltdown Festival, Peaches’ show is celebrating twenty years of her seminal album The Teaches of Peaches. Dutifully, she's crafted a show that not only exhibits the vibrancy of her plentiful career, but also displays the brightest elements of electroclash music altogether, and highlights why she created an album as rulebreaking as The Teaches of Peaches to begin with. 

The night begins as the floor is flooded with hot pink lighting and Peaches arrives on stage in a silky pink bra, knickers and coat, and a large vagina plushie strapped to her head. She plays ‘Set It Off’ using only a Roland MC505 groovebox, a nod to The Teaches of Peaches’ origins as a DIY project built solely on that machine. As she progresses through the set-list, different instruments are added to the mix one-by-one and dancers clad in distressed tights and black lingerie appear as Peaches’ musical world builds bit by bit towards its climax.

The show keeps an incredible pace, each individual track Peaches performs provides something surprising. Just a few minutes in, she’s performing ‘Diddle My Skittle’ in a rhinestoned purple bodysuit, walking over the crowd, with fans lifting her up into the air by her feet. After ‘Rock Show’ plays as an exercise in meta-performance, with Peaches shredding an electric guitar, yelling “you came to see a rock show! A big gigantic cock show!” to an adoring crowd. Later, she performs ‘Dick in the Air’ inside a literal giant inflatable dick.

Both the costuming and set-list constitute a journey through Peaches’ insane twenty-years-plus long career. She performs every track from The Teaches of Peaches, and additionally throws in a handful of highlights from the rest of her discography. ‘Boys Wanna Be Her’ is a stand-out, expectedly, with this incredible track’s grungey, fist-pumping sound rocketing through the room, and throwback track ‘Shake Yer Dix’ is the daftest sing-a-long live tune imaginable, in the best way. All the while, Peaches, her band, and her dancers perform in an array of costuming referencing different moments in Peaches’ career, be that the hot pink plastic of The Teaches of Peaches, or jackets adorned in reams of hair recognisable from her I Feel Cream album art.

The show is bizarre fun and proves the strength behind the ethos of The Teaches of Peaches, justifying why it’s an album worth celebrating the twentieth anniversary of. With that album, and her live shows, Peaches offers herself up as a representative of limitless experimentation of self-expression. She utilises the best of punk and electroclash music’s sensibilities: that is, their ability to provide a sense of personal freedom and emotional release.

Though her music might seem somewhat abrasive to an outsider, it’s this freeing quality that makes this show feel warm and welcoming. Indeed, Peaches maintains a charismatic charm throughout and ultimately comes off as a genuinely likeable performer. Her respect for her fans is clear, and vice versa. She displays an endearing sense of humour right from the start all the way to the end of her set, where after an unstoppable performance of her all-time greatest song ‘Fuck the Pain Away’, Peaches returns for a closing encore where she sings an extended, lewder version of Celine Dion’s ‘It’s All Coming Back to Me Now’ dressed in a harness of hair and silicone boobs. The cover is characteristically absurd and funny, and with it, Peaches twenty-year victory lap show ends with her status as a musical legend firmly cemented.

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More about: Peaches