Peaches Rub on Limited Edition Colored LP + Download

It’s been six years since Peaches released her last studio album. But far from being a break, these past six years have been some of the busiest and most productive in the provocative musician-producer-filmmaker-performance artist’s career. From acclaimed theater productions to her cinematic debut at the Toronto International Film Festival to the release of her first book, Peaches pushed herself further and with more artistic rewards than ever before during her time away from the studio. 

That work ethic should come as little surprise, though. This is Peaches we’re talking about, an artist who’s managed to wield immeasurable influence over mainstream pop culture while still operating from outside of its confines, carving a bold, sexually progressive path in her own image that’s opened the door for countless others to follow. Now, creatively refreshed and recharged, she’s emerged from the studio in rare form with Rub, her fifth and most unequivocal album to date. It’s an adventurous, audacious musical statement, the latest entry in a conversation Peaches opened up 15 years ago and the world may just now have finally caught up with.

Rub begins where the book What Else Is In The Teaches Of Peaches, left off in 2014, as Peaches headed into her newly-built garage studio in Los Angeles to begin more than a full year of work on the album, collaborating with longtime friend Vice Cooler. “After six years, I was excited about my lyrics again, about what Peaches was,” she explains. “I felt more comfortable living out any idea I wanted to try. We spent ten hours a day making beats, and whatever stuck, I would write on and develop. The only agenda was to make the best album we could.”

Oozing with seductive rhythms and bedroom-rattling bass, the record opens with the semi-spoken hook of “Close Up,” delivered with an inimitable and impenetrable cool by Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon in just one take. Peaches’ old collaborator Feist also returns on album closer “I Mean Something,” singing a hypnotic hook and lending a chillingly beautifully wordless melody. But in between those two guest appearances, this album is pure Peaches.

“Come with me / You know me / Feel free / Peaches,” she raps with a hard-won swagger and confidence on the title track, which is as full of vivid, lewd imagery as anything she’s ever written. “Dick In The Air” flips gender roles with an absurdist twist, as Peaches preaches, “I’m sick of hands in the air / And shake our asses like we don’t care / We’ve been shaking our tits for years / So let’s switch positions no inhibitions” before exhorting her audience to “put your dick in the air.” Similarly, on “Vaginoplasty,” she responds to a culture that measures manhood in inches but shames women for their sexuality with lines like “my pussy’s big and I’m proud of it…make you bow down to it til you drown in it.”

The gorgeous, throbbing “Light In Places” was written for performance artist Empress Stah and her ‘Stargasm’ show, the world’s only Laser Buttplug Aerial performance (“I’ve got light in places you didn’t know it could shine”), while “Sick In The Head” is a gritty electro-pop track influenced by Suicide, and the album’s two breakup songs - the dark and menacing “Free Drink Ticket” and the insanely catchy pop song “Dumbfuck” - find Peaches addressing issues far more personal than political.