Music
Peaches, The Art School, Glasgow
Lisa-Marie Ferla Five stars
There’s a line in Burst!, Peaches’ digital-only single from 2012, that captures what it’s like to see pop culture’s last true iconoclast live for the first time.
“You’re all dressed up,” she speak-sings, “and you’re never gonna be ashamed.”
It’s one for the crowd - beautiful refugees from the heyday of Death Disco, if not the Arches itself - and for the artist too. Striding on to the stage to open with the title track from current album Rub, Peaches sounded like electroclash’s fairy godmother and looked like its superhero. The big costume reveal: a pink and yellow cape with a glittering gold lining, a part-mohawk part-mullet and oversized orange foam ovaries for shoulder pads.
A lesser artist might have scheduled herself a couple of breathers, but Peaches skilfully mixed older songs and new to create a beats-driven megamix of a set, aided only by a couple of strategically-used dancers. Her rhymes were merciless: Close Up, the excoriating critique of social media that is my favourite song from the new album, was practically a threat without Kim Gordon’s vocal contribution; while Mommy Complex and Operate were equally thrilling. And yet Talk To Me, Peaches’ take on the torch song, was breathtaking and showed off a surprisingly magnificent vocal range.
But nobody comes to a Peaches show for note-perfect performances and the theatrics didn’t disappoint either: there were dancers clad as sexy Halloween vaginas and half-naked unicorns, an attempt to walk on the crowd inside a giant inflated condom and more costume changes than a Madonna show. Peaches was a far better value-for-money prospect though - getting changed right there on stage meant no awkward pauses to fill.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here