Peaches: Tough Girl Tender By DAVE ITZKOFF
IN just a single performance on a recent Saturday night, the provocative rocker Peaches assumed multiple personas: a tied-up bondage victim, a brutal police officer and (with the help of a wig) a blond bombshell. Afterward, in the basement of the East Village nightclub Plaid, she played her most surprising role yet: den mother. Advertisement
On a narrow staircase outside her dressing room, Peaches (whose real name is Merrill Nisker, and whose real hair is brunet, worn in a shoulder-length mullet) was wearing a black lace dress, her eyelashes thick with mascara and her lavender eye shadow smeared all the way to her temples. She was surrounded by a half-dozen friends, and a bouncer was concerned they were creating a fire hazard. "These are my children," she protested. "I can't just put them out on the street."
You would never know it, but Peaches was once a schoolteacher in her hometown, Toronto. But what she does for a living these days is wholly inappropriate for the young. Her electronic rock combines catchy drum beats, guitar riffs and the occasional Joan Jett sample with sexually charged lyrics so unambiguous they would make Anaïs Nin blush. With its anthems of liberation and odes to various parts of the body, her 2001 debut album, "The Teaches of Peaches," became a staple of gay and straight dance clubs alike, and a familiar beat on the fashion runways. On her newest record, which has a title that cannot be printed here, her music continues to stomp all over traditional boundaries of gender and sexual orientation. As she says in the chorus to her song "I U She," "I don't have to make the choice, I like girls and I like boys."
Now a resident of Berlin, the 36-year-old Peaches, who stands barely 5-foot-3 in a pair of white leather boots, has a fan club that is as diverse as her taste. She has recently recorded duets with the godfather of punk, Iggy Pop, and the rock diva Pink, and will be opening for the Gothic shock rocker Marilyn Manson on a European tour in November.
Another musical pal, the bawdy rapper Princess Superstar, was waiting on the staircase to present Peaches with a gift in a shopping bag from the Lower East Side boutique Babes in Toyland, which sells sexual aids. Peaches rushed off to show the gift to her backup dancers, two statuesque women named Annabel and Billie, who were changing out of impromptu fetish costumes made from garbage bags.
As you might expect from a woman who cribbed her stage name from the Nina Simone song "Four Women," there is a softer side to Peaches, too. On a recent trip through France she surprised her dancers by taking them to a concert by the trashy American rockabilly band the Cramps. "We were in Cologne, and I told them that I was going to be on TV, and I wanted them to be on the show with me," Peaches recalled.
Her dancer Annabel interrupted. "When we got there, we were like, why did she take us to see a Cramps cover band?" she said. "Then we realized it was the actual band."
As her entourage expanded to include a British club promoter, Sean McCluskey, and J. D. Samson of the feminist pop trio Le Tigre, Peaches fielded suggestions on where they should go next. "I want to take you to Carousel," Princess Superstar said. "It's a strip club where all the dancers look like Lil' Kim."
Peaches said, "Ooh, I want to check that out, but I should probably go to my own after-party."
So the group instead moved to a private room that had been reserved for them in the cellar of Lit, an East Village bar, where the city's smoking ban seemed to be regarded as a friendly suggestion. The after-party was supposed to be guest-list only, but at least one fan, a doe-eyed blonde with a vaguely European accent, managed to slip inside and approach Peaches directly.
"Your show was the most amazing thing I've ever seen," the woman said, grasping Peaches by the wrists. "I think some of it rubbed off on me."
Peaches smiled. "Just play safe," she replied.