Peaches didn’t take the stage until a little before midnight at her Chicago Metro show last Friday. But the party started long before with opening act Amanda Blank, whose hip hop take on Peaches’ brand of sexed-up electronica made her a perfect start to the evening.
Scantily dressed in a blue and white leotard, Blank jumped right into “Something Bigger, Something Better” off her debut album I Love You. Over a bass-heavy beat and gunshot snare drums, Blank took no prisoners with her performance. Whether running back and forth across the stage, crouching down or thrusting her hips wildly, Blank demanded attention and the audience seemed happy to give it to her.
As much a dance star as she is an emcee, songs like “Make–Up,” a cover of Prince’s protégé group Vanity 6, show that the 26-year-old Philadelphia native is definitely a product of the 1980s. The song sounded a little out of place on Bank’s debut with its minimalist beat and spoken word lyrics, but live, it fit right in. Lyrically, the song was a far cry from the rapid-fire rhymes her fans have come to know, but Blank milked the attitude out of every word.
While there’s plenty of aggression in her music — as she sang in “Lemme Get Some,” she’ll “whip a motherfucker’s ass just for wasting [her] time” — she’s not without a sweet side. “A Love Song,” which borrows lines from LL Cool J’s “I Need Love,” and samples Santigold’s “I’m A Lady,” is exactly that. But Blank quickly abandoned any sentimentalism as she segued into her first single “Might Like You Better,” a grimy track whose hit line “I might like you better if we slept together” proved there’s no one better to open Peaches show.
Blank closed her set with “Make It Take It,” a peppy, riot girl hip pop tune that made Blank sound like a one-woman version of Le Tigre. While a DJ and a drummer accompanied her whole set, there were no back-up singers or hype men to help her out. In fact, there were only a handful of occasions where Blank paused to catch her breath, an impressive feat considering the speed of her delivery. “Make It Take It” is clearly a fan favorite, but fans can only manage to sing few lines of the hook before falling behind. A true rap prodigy, all bets are off for whether you can stay on the same page.
Peaches, on the other hand, was on a completely different page to begin with. In a magenta body suit with outrageous shoulder pads, black industrial boots, two-toned, partially shaved head and layers of rainbow make-up, she was practically from another planet.
On stage, she sauntered back and forth between members of her band, which resembled a futuristic heavy metal outfit, complete with fishnets, plenty of skin and lots of leather. But Peaches wasted no time getting down and dirty with the front row, making sure to get in people’s faces on bouncy attitude anthems like “Serpentine.” With so much energy and swagger — not to mention excessive crotch-grabbing — it’s hard to believe that Peaches (real name, Merrill Nisker) is 43.
After donning a cropped white leather jacket and breaking out laser lights, Peaches turned herself into her own disco ball as she turned the concert’s light show on herself. Lady GaGa might have brought her conceptual performance art to mainstream pop, but Peaches’ theatrics made it clear that she’s been doing high-production shows all along. And for an artist who’s made a career of pushing the sexual envelope, it wasn’t surprising when Peaches started using a light saber — her own disco stick — for phallic purposes.
Most of her setlist came from her latest studio album, I Feel Cream, which introduced a sophistication unseen on her previous efforts, as Peaches toned down some of her trademark sex raps for songs about relationships. It’s hard to say whether the live setting really does her sound justice, though. The booming bass and drums kept the energy high, and vocally, Peaches was unfaltering in the delivery of her half-sung, half-rapped songs. But at such a loud volume, the character of the song was often lost, and it was sometimes hard to tell what song she was performing.
Still, it must not have been that big of a problem — when Peaches began “Fuck The Pain Away,” her most infamous hit, the crowd was more than happy to sing along. Peaches also called attention to one of her more interesting stage props during the song. Pointing between her legs where a strobe light was blinking from underneath her leotard Peaches told the crowd, “I hope you’re mesmerized by my pussy light.”
Mesmerizing was a good way to put it. During her second encore, Peaches, dressed in a flesh-colored body suit with prosthetic breasts, began chanting, “Shirts come off, shirts shirts come off!” as she instructed the audience to strip down. While Peaches did offer some taunts (“I bet if I went to Gary, Indiana they would take off more!”), the audience didn’t need a lot of convincing. And in a way, it was hard not see the number of shirts waving around as a kind of salute to Peaches. Equal parts bizarre and provocative, she deserved the praise — after all, it’s not everyday that an artist can get you to take your clothes off so quickly.