Peaches - Impeach My Bush

If The Teaches of Peaches and Fatherfucker have taught us only one thing, it is that Peaches wishes to present herself as an embodiment of all things introverted, classy and demure. With her third album, the cleverly-titled Impeach My Bush, Peaches proves with understated grace that she's still our favorite electo-rockin' shy girl. Lyrically, Peaches tackles the same topics that her first two records were built around: Sex, kinky sex, kinkier sex, liberal politics, and sex. The short, loud opener, "Fuck or Kill" combines Peaches' love of the aforementioned topics and also produces the album's title. She proclaims, "I'd rather fuck who I want than kill who I am told to / Let's face it, we all want tush / If I'm wrong, impeach my bush." Peaches then drops the "my" from the last line, and "Impeach Bush" repeats twice before the song ends. "Two Guys" tells of Peaches' romantic vision of two men who want to be with her. Peaches, always the inventive thinker, offers up this idea: Any men who want to get with her must first get with each other. After all, as Peaches does not fail to remind us, "An ass is an ass." "Slippery Dick" is not a tale of a sly man named Richard, as I originally thought it might be. Instead Peaches treats listeners to a healthy dose of subtle innuendo: "Bam bam / you wanna ram the damn / pull back the curtains / and feed the clam." Musically, the tracks on Bush, much like the tracks on Peaches' previous releases, can be roughly divided into two distinct, though sometimes overlapping, subgenres: Electro-thrash rock numbers and bombastic beat stompers with a decidedly more urban feel. Of the former group there are tracks like "You Love It," which features Joan Jett on backing vocals and guitars, "Give 'Er," featuring Josh Homme (of Queens of the Stone Age) on lead guitar and Leslie Feist on backup vocals, and "Boys Wanna Be Her." Falling into the more beat-centered category are songs like "Tent in Your Pants," "Hit It Hard," "Get It," and "Stick It to the Pimp." Where Bush begins to differentiate itself from the rest of Peaches' catalogue is in its relative complexity. This time, Peaches has opted to forgo some of the lyrical repetition that distinguished her earlier works. Several tracks on the record are centered on a verse-chorus structure, with all of the verses having distinct sets of lyrics. In this respect, and in others, Bush sounds more polished and, some will say, mainstream. This may be true, but the raw energy of Peaches beloved music can be found in each and every song here. The not-as-repetitive lyrics make the songs easier to listen to repetitively and allow Peaches to work in more of her fun and fresh metaphors. All in all, I'd say a little bit of studio gloss sounds excellent on Peaches, and Bush sounds like her most well-rounded, though certainly not her most mature, release yet. [www.peachesrocks.com]