Last weekend my partners and I drove to Sydney to see Peaches live in concert.
I am not much of a concert-goer, and so it often takes someone I really love to get me out to a gig. This year Peaches was that person. When we saw she was touring we jumped on tickets , and I did not regret it one moment during the show. In doing so I’ve been thinking a lot about what it is about her that I love so much.
Peaches’ concert was raw, and totally energetic. She did not rest for a single moment, pumping a mixture of her hits and some new music with energy that just continued unabated. She did so in really creative ways, with a cool mixture of props, costumes and back up dancers that created what was a really coherent show that in itself had somewhat of a narrative.
At one point for example the stage crew blew up a giant condom, which Peaches walked into to sing Dick in the Air. At another time she literally walked out onto the crowd, balancing herself on people’s hands while performing.
I think most impressive though were the use of her back up dancers. She had two dancers that appeared throughout. The two first showed right at the start and then re-entered during Vaginoplasty wearing giant vaginas on their heads. As the concert continued they slowly stripped their clothes, revealing themselves the crowd. In the end the two were wearing matching pink leather harnesses, embracing each other in the last songs in deep, and highly sexual, embrace. In one of the encores, the two, both with long flowing black hair, came out with hair dryers, blowing their hair around from the front. It was, strangely, one of the most sensual things I’d seen.
This is the thing I realised I love about Peaches. Peaches has built her career off being shocking — her top hits are songs like ‘Fuck the Pain Away’, ‘Two Guys for Every Girl’ and ‘Tent in My Pants’. She revels off being risqué, and I love her for it.
However, going to her concert, part of me feared what that would look like. The show was heavily choreographed, and in doing so it had a real potential to look staged. I worried about a concert where Peaches went ‘what shocking thing can I do now?’. I worried she’d be doing it for the shock value, not because it suited the music, the crowd, or even the show itself.
But it was nothing like that at all. The show was not a ‘shock for shock sake’. Im fact it was less shocking, and more sensual and sexual. The choreography, and sexuality, all fit within the setting of the stage and the music. Yes, she did come out in a giant condom, and it was amazing, but she also designed (or had designed) amazing costumes, and dance moves, and props that all worked together to create a highly entertaining show.
It was raw, it was real, and it was naturally. Most importantly it was natural to her. It was not contrived, or designed just to ‘shock’, but to entertain, and I suspect in many ways, just to have fun. And have fun and entertain she did.
That is what I love about her. She does sex but she does it because she loves it, not because it’s what makes her career (at least that’s my perception). And that is the Teaches of Peaches — she teaches us how to make sex real, and not just a thing to put us into shock and awe.