Peaches – Impeach My Bush

When every pop ands rock star is jumping on the anti-Bush bandwagon it may come as slight relief that Impeach My Bush has very little to do with George Dubya and American politics and everything to do with the sleazy, filthy no-holds barred, hardcore sex that we’ve come to expect from electroclash’s raunchy cover girl Peaches.

Three albums on, and little has evolved in Peaches’ music, but the exciting edgy energy that first made her stand out from the overhyped electro crowd is omnipresent throughout her latest offering.

The album opens with the sexually aggressive Fuck or Kill, a brief introduction to Impeach My Bush that hears Peaches yell: “I’d rather fuck who I want than kill who I am told to”, before inviting listeners to Impeach My Bush.

The 47-second track merges seamlessly into Tent In Your Pants. And no prizes for guessing that this isn’t a song about camping. It has a sleazy hip hop vibe, but doesn’t quite reach the climax that the metaphoric tent pole seems to induce. There’s no sign of the sex talk subsiding as we move into Hit It Hard and Peaches tells her lover to “be my Moog and I’ll twiddle your knob, be my corn and I’ll nibble your cob, now take my apples and start to bob, you play the jewels and I’ll grab and rob.”

Single Downtown has an effortlessly cool disco sound that wouldn’t sound out of place on Madonna‘s Confessions On A Dancefloor, but lyrics like “went to your area and I thought I would bury ya, touch a monolith and it caused hysteria,” make Madge look like Enid Blyton. Moving on from oral sex, Peaches educates us on threesomes with Two Guys (for Every Girl), and then masturbation in Rock the Shocker.

Musically things take a change of pace in You Love It, which explores punk rock territory, with some help from Joan Jett. In Give ‘er, Guitars are introduced once again, thanks to the genius of Josh Homme, which sees Peaches deliver a fairly formidable blues rock vocal – a sound that really suits her. Do Ya is another rock track, and also stands out as a highlight on the album.

In fact the input of Jett and Homme has helped to diversify the album, which despite delivering ten perfectly formed slices of electronica, is in danger of becoming flat. Without these tracks, the pace of this album rarely varies. Although there is little to criticise, there is little that really stands out either. There is an absence of memorable hooks, in the way that her Fuck The Pain Away really implanted itself in the brain.

The subject matter of this album could also benefit from a bit of variation. Peaches’ overt and upfront sexuality was once refreshing, but it now feels a little relentless. Quite possibly, the novelty has worn off. They say that you shouldn’t mix sex with politics but perhaps this album would have been more interesting if Peaches had used her bold approach to impeach Bush.