What would the world be without Peaches? A sadder and more colorless place. The Canadian Berliner by choice set the style for a generation of young feminists, musicians and performance artists with her electroclash punk of the noughties. She has never really been away: In recent years she has brought her revue “There Is Only One Peach With a Hole in the Middle” and the electro-rock opera “Peaches Does Herself” to the stage and in 2024 she was the subject of two documentaries, “Teaches of Peaches” and “Peaches Goes Bananas”, among dozens of other projects.
Now, after more than ten years, she seems to have found the time, leisure and inspiration for a whole new album. And the wait was worth it, because with this seventh album, Peaches proves that it was never just the aesthetics, the shock factor, or the spirit of the times that made her an icon – but that she can also simply write really good songs.
NO LUBE SO RUDE manages to sound contemporary and not just like an electroclash throwback. Of course, it helps that precisely these sound aesthetics are experiencing a renaissance in the wake of the Indiesleaze revival. And of course she can still make philistines glow, because even if we are all oversexed and underfucked, self-determined female desire, explicitly formulated, the post-menopause, and especially the confrontation with age and physicality, still remain a taboo. And with the surprisingly romantic “Be Love,” Peaches brings perhaps the biggest shocker to the end of the album: an ode to (self-)love.
This review appears in Musikexpress 3/2026.
