Music review: Peaches, IndigO2, London

The evening feels, unexpectedly, like a vigorous DJ set laced with an unusual amount of bum-waggling

Peaches was wearing what can only be described as a necklace of boobs (Getty Images)

Peaches is famous for two reasons: fabulously potty-mouthed electro and outré stage shows. So when she shows up on stage in a gold lamé leotard and what can only be described as a massive necklace of boobs, it’s quite easy to work out which way the evening seems to be going.

She’s on stage by herself for most of the time: no live band, no smutty set dressing, and only a small dressing-up box stashed behind her mixing desk. From time to time, a pair of nubile dancers emerge on stage in variously pervy costumes (for instance, a dildo-horned unicorn) largely to bare their buttocks the audience for a few minutes. So far, it’s all going much as a Peaches fan might expect.

However, some strange choices have been made regarding the music. Her only instrument is a mixing desk, and she’s definitely entered rave-attack mode. Gone are her customary sparse beats and filthy raps, to be replaced by a blast radius of unremitting EDM. For the most part, it’s hard to tell what’s going on, as each new track segues into the next without pause for breath. Is she playing her usual music with extra elbow grease, or extemporising on the spot? Who knows, but it’s not what we were expecting at all, and it all just ends up feeling like a particularly vigorous DJ set laced with an unusual amount of bum-waggling.

The dancers are a joy, continually switching into ever more outlandish costumes. At one stage, they’re playing sexy bishops and sexy choirboys, during which time the sexy bishop has her sexy bible set alight, while manly, throbbing beats build in the background.

At a later point, we discover what’s underneath the sexy bishop’s sexy cassock: demonstrably unchristian nipple pasties, which presumably go some way to make her feel a bit better about her burned bible.

Peaches, meanwhile, seems to be having a lovely time. She’s dividing her time between twiddling knobs in the background and capering about at the front of the stage, in and out of wigs, generally giving it 110 per cent. She’s at her best when she remembers she can sing, belting out old-school disco-style melodies with an absolutely enormous voice. The rest of the time, her raps, which may for all we know be outstandingly grubby, end up lost in all the racket. It’s rather a shame.