Why is your forthcoming album your first in over a decade and who is\/are the \u201cyou\u201d in comeback single Not in Your Mouth None of Your Business? k4ren123
I\u2019ve been very busy \u2013 touring, working with dance troupes, performance art, sculptures, playing the lead role in a production of Bertolt Brecht\u2019s The Seven Deadly Sins in Stuttgart, and on and on. Then, finally, I started on new music. The \u201cyou\u201d in the single are people who feel they have the right to have autonomy over other people\u2019s bodies and make it unsafe for people to be who they want to be. I\u2019m especially talking about queer and mostly trans rights. The song\u2019s like a mantra or chant, a way to empower people in only a few sentences.<\/p>\n
As a fan of your concert costume design as much as your music, what can we expect from the upcoming tour? Kelechica
I was thinking about sustainability and went to a costume sale at the Berlin opera and bought a bunch of opera costumes. I\u2019m working with Charlie Le Mindu, who is transforming them into weird new creations. In the video for Not in Your Mouth, I\u2019m wearing my sister\u2019s leather jacket. It\u2019s just been the fifth anniversary of her passing, and I wanted to keep something of her, so I kept her leather jacket that she wore the crap out of since the 90s. So, in a way, she\u2019ll be in the show.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Your album titles \u2013 The Teaches of Peaches<\/a>, Impeach My Bush and now the forthcoming No Lube So Rude \u2013 are like rallying cries wrapped in provocation. Does the title come first or does that crystallise once the songs have taken shape? VerulamiumParkRanger Is it true that you used to be roommates with Feist<\/a> in Toronto? What was that like? seoalwat As a long-term resident of Berlin, do you think it\u2019s losing its edge? meansardine \u2018When I went solo I kept the Shit attitude\u2019 \u2026 Peaches on stage in London in 2015. Photograph: Jim Dyson\/Redferns<\/p>\n Were you really in a band called the Shit? Topcat89 Fatherfucker is still my go-to karaoke song, much to my daughter\u2019s discomfort, but I feel like our generation of riot queer artists were louder, angrier and more demanding. Is it different working creatively and politically in 2025 v 2005? SUSE____
The title is always the last thing to come, once I have the big picture. No Lube So Rude is the name of one of the songs, which is about how we can help the friction of the world. We need to smooth it around a little because we have so much irritation and dryness.<\/p>\n
Yes \u2013 she was making her album Monarch (Lay Your Jewelled Head Down) and I was making The Teaches of Peaches. We lived above a queer sex shop called Come As You Are, where they\u2019d do porn workshops for women, and lectures, but we lived a few floors up so customers never wandered upstairs. Feist and I got along really well and had amazing parties, then we\u2019d go into our rooms and make our albums. Our music was completely different, but we were similar in terms of socialising, and were constantly crushing cockroaches or trapping mice. Our scene in Toronto was very vibrant. Even though we all had different bands, we had a Super 8 film collective and would support each other. Chilly Gonzales<\/a> had a riff-rock band called Freedom; we also had other bands like the Permanent Stains. Feist would be my B-girl in my early Peaches shows. I\u2019m still good friends with her.<\/p>\n
I think the whole world is losing its mind, to be honest, and moving towards crazily dysfunctional gentrification and a wealth gap. Berlin is feeling it like everybody else. Politics and club culture are changing, but I still feel there are pockets of the city that you can cling on to, and we have to keep fighting a good fight and find our place. I moved there 20 years ago because it was cheap and there was lots of space. I felt there was a big creative openness and that what I was doing was more understood there than in Canada<\/a> at the time. The politics are complicated now \u2013 funding is being cut and such \u2013 but it\u2019s still a great place to be creative.<\/p>\n
I was \u2013 with Chilly Gonzales, Mocky [Dominic Salole], who produced some Feist albums, and another member, Sticky [Henderson]. In about 1996, the four of us got together in a basement. We\u2019d smoke a lot of weed and yell whatever we wanted to about what we felt about each other sexually or how we were feeling. It was very impulsive and improvisational. After our first jam, we changed instruments, which was the first time I ever played drums or bass, and I fell in love with keyboards. We just said, \u201cOh my God, we are the shit!\u201d so named ourselves that. Our live album never came out, but [we] did put out a cassette tape, which had an early version of [Peaches\u2019 2003 song] Operate. It was actually a very important period for me \u2013 when I went solo I kept the Shit attitude.<\/p>\n
I think it feels important to realise that there\u2019s a younger generation that listen to me, but there\u2019s also an older generation that are not going to stay home and sleep. That\u2019s a wild shift: the older generation is still feeling that punk energy, but the world is a more pressurised place compared to 20 years ago. That\u2019s why I don\u2019t want to water things down, so I give it like I give it, but with the punch of 2025.<\/p>\n