Peaches w/ U.S. Girls and Ononos
The Showbox, Seattle, WA
10.07.15
Are those dancing vaginas? Absolutely. If you’re familiar with Peaches, this is really nothing new. If you’re not, well then, welcome to the show. Peaches – née Merrill Nisker – has been grinding out her brand of sexually-charged and intimately vulnerable electroclash for well on fifteen years and her uncompromising performances bring her recorded attitude to life in a way that few other shows even approach. After catching her relatively short, but altogether winning, set at this year’s Bumbershoot, we were pretty stoked to see her come around again so soon.
At the Showbox, the crowd was surprisingly slim at first, the stage set up familiar, Peaches’ DJ decks on a high rise that she frequents and also uses for outfit changes, adding and subtracting costume parts throughout the show, from a body suit printed with hands and a beetle-like breastplate, to a mass of bulky metallic chains she swings around her neck like a hula hoop.
Peaches just released her sixth studio album Rub last month, and it’s truly a classic Peaches album, a la The Teaches of Peaches. An arresting work, she plods further into her overarching career themes of gender identification, leftist politics, and queer sex, all while keeping an eye on the club. Her fuzz-laden, deep electro beats have always been danceable, and she does want you to dance, as she called out those lingering in the bar instead of marauding on the dance floor.
By the third track, the venue was full and she and her two dancers (see above re: vagina costumes) played their way through a set that covered both new tracks and classics. Oh, and they showered the crowd with multiple bottles of champagne, another kitschy repeat element of her stage performance. One new element was the giant blow-up condom-like balloon that stretched over the crowd. At one point Peaches was actually walking over the crowd inside the prophylactic. She closed the set with the classic breakup record “Fuck the Pain Away” only to return to an ecstatic crowd for a three song encore.
U.S. Girls – the musical moniker of Meg Remy – took the middle slot for the night, displaying Remy’s deconstructionist pop. Seattle’s own Ononos opened – the lead singer sporting a shiny white getup with fringe on the arms and a hood, and a red mesh face mask, while the drummer and keyboard player also had their faces covered – for a sensory overload of chanty electro-punk.
For your own night of letting it all out, find a Peaches show here.
Peaches Set List
Rub
Operate
Vaginoplasty
Talk to Me
Mommy Complex
Lovertits
Pickles
I Feel Cream
How You Like My Cut
Burst!
Boys Wanna Be Her
Dick in the Air
Fuck the Pain Away
Encore:
Dumb Fuck
AA XXX
Encore 2:
Light in Places
Review by Stephanie Dore
Photos by Sunny Martini
Peaches
U.S. Girls
Ononos
