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Provocative Peaches continues to push buttons

What: Peaches with Quay Dash When: Tonight, 8 p.m. Where: Sugar (858 Yates St.) Tickets: $32.50 at ticketfly.com and Lyle’s Place (770 Yates St.) Peaches leaves no provocation untapped when it comes to her music.
Peaches 2.jpg
Peaches plays Sugar tonight.

What: Peaches with Quay Dash
When: Tonight, 8 p.m.
Where: Sugar (858 Yates St.)
Tickets: $32.50 at ticketfly.com and Lyle’s Place (770 Yates St.)

 

Peaches leaves no provocation untapped when it comes to her music. “There are people who my message really speaks to, and who show their appreciation and have an emotional connection to what I do,” the performer said from a recent tour stop.

“But some people are really terrified, and will run for their dear life.”

Peaches has never performed in Victoria, so many will be unprepared for what the Toronto-born, Los Angeles-based art-rocker is presenting at Sugar nightclub tonight. Rest assured, it will be memorable.

Peaches, born Merrill Nisker, will be joined at her Victoria debut by costumed, gyrating dancers Jess Daly and Agent Cleave, whose outfits include — among other accoutrements — large-scale replicas of the female anatomy (these are “modern versions” of her now-infamous dancing vaginas from previous tours, according to Peaches. “They have had vaginoplasty.”)

If there is one artist who is pushing buttons in 2016, it’s Peaches. She sings of her aim to “switch positions, no inhibitions,” which is her way of suggesting that gender-specific roles in music are on the way out. We are all rock stars, according to Peaches — she just happens to be one who occasionally wears a beard for effect and writes frankly about sex with all orientations.

She has several albums and acting roles to her credit, along with a book, documentary and concert film on her resumé. She has also collaborated with Iggy Pop, Feist, Christina Aguilera and members of Queens of the Stone Age, among others. But at the end of the day, the provocative imagery of Peaches is what often shines brightest, blurring the line between good taste and questionable morals.

To some, she’s a walking, talking form of click-bait. To others, she’s a powerful, vital artist, with an edge that grows more pronounced with each album.

“I always start with the music first,” she said. “I think about what I want to say, let the music say it, and then from there I take it to visual extremes.”

Everything from her raw-nerve music to her ribald stage performances falls under the umbrella of art, where in Peaches’ world anything goes. Her latest recording, Rub, which capped a six-year break, is no less thought-provoking than her earlier efforts; in some ways, given that her profile has grown to a more visible level, she took more sexually explicit risks than ever.

Could she have made Rub more accessible for a wider audience? Sure, but she saw no benefit to dumbing-down her message, or softening her approach, in order to curry favour with the mainstream.

“There’s other people who do that, a lot of pop stars who are taking elements of things I’m saying. In interviews, there is a lot of tough talk [from pop acts], but in their music it is not like that, and that’s fine. That’s their way. For me, part of my art is not just the talk but the doing of it. Maybe it would be a lot more lucrative for me if I did it the other way, but I don’t think that would be me. If it was softened, it wouldn’t be my message.”

Marilyn Manson, David Bowie, John Waters, Lady Gaga and Hedwig and the Angry Inch are all reference points for Peaches. And yet, she has few true peers at the moment. Peaches, who studied theatre in university, never does something for the sheer sake of it. That’s where the dividing line is drawn: She is willing to say or do anything to start a conversation about gender politics and sexual identity, among other topics, while other acts will only go so far to shock and awe.

“I didn’t have huge goals of changing pop music. I just say what I want to say directly.”

She admits to being “good at multiple things,” which explains the constant rash of activities she puts her name to. Wordplay is one of her specialties, which pairs nicely with her desire to be honest at all times, consequences be damned, but she views herself as a performer first and foremost.

It was evident in her one-woman show, Peaches Christ Superstar, which was staged during her years living in Berlin, and her performance as the lead male character, Orpheus, in the opera L’Orfeo, and it shows on the videos for her best-known songs. “Obviously, I’m a great performer, I can perform under any condition. Not to be egotistical about it, but it’s a talent I have.”

In the end, less adventuresome music fans will fail to grasp what she calls “the teaches of Peaches,” a modus operandi wrapped in patent-leather clothing. She is used to being criticized for being a provocateur, so it hardly matters to her who listens and who doesn’t. “Blasphemous is the way some see it. That lets me know where people are at — where we are all at. We think we’re so progressive, forward-thinking. And in some ways we are, but in some ways we are not.”

mdevlin@timescolonist.com