Peaches, Art School, Glasgow, review: A joyous call to banish ingrained shame

Pre-recorded backing track beats were simple yet compellingly pounding, and her stagecraft was symphonic

Veteran Canadian agent provocateur Merrill Nisker, aka Peaches’ (Getty Images)

“You're all dressed up like you’re never gonna feel ashamed,” shrieks Peaches during ‘Burst’, putting into words the mighty sense of affirmation which overruns her show. “Take control!” In these dark times it’s pleasing to note that a feminist electro-rock performer can still take to the stage to play a song called ‘Vaginoplasty’ while her dancers – one male, one female – are dressed as giant, dancing, anatomically correct vaginas. Or that she can walk on high through the audience in a huge inflatable condom during the appropriately-named ‘Dick in the Air’. Or that she can turn simulated oral and anal sex into joyous disco dance sequences during ‘Boys Wanna Be Her’.

The fear, when writing as a man of the feminist credentials inherent in veteran Canadian agent provocateur Merrill Nisker aka Peaches’ work, is that you stray into mansplaining territory. Far better to note - even though young women make up most of the packed audience yelling the choral line of ‘Fuck the Pain Away’ back at her – that her show is an impudently joyous call to all to banish ingrained shame about sex, our gender and our bodies, and have fun in whatever consensual manner we like. Playing on the back of her recent sixth album Rub, her pre-recorded backing track beats were simple yet compellingly pounding, and her stagecraft was symphonic.