PEACHES - No Lube So Rude

Eleven years after her last studio work, Merrill Beth Nisker aka Peaches returns with an album that, right from its title, leaves no room for misunderstanding. "No Lube So Rude" is explicit, noisy, defiantly political. And it is, for better or worse, an album entirely consistent with her trajectory.

Indeed, ever since her debut with "The Teaches Of Peaches" (2000), the Canadian artist has built her identity on a mix of provocative sexuality, brutal irony and queer activism. Here that concept is reaffirmed and brought up to date, in a world crisscrossed by cultural, social and identity-based frictions. Lubricant thus becomes a metaphor for pleasure as resistance, for the body as a space of self-determination. The personal, once again, is a political matter.

On a strictly musical level, though, the album is less convincing than its manifesto would suggest. The electroclash beats underpinning most of the eleven tracks are functional but rarely surprising. There's electronic music, there's dance, there are pseudo-industrial nods and the odd hyperpop or darkwave echo, but the overall impression is of a rather basic production: solid, current, in step with the times, yet lacking that spark which turns a decent track into something memorable. The collaboration with The Squirt Deluxe and the mixing and mastering deliver a clean sound, but not a particularly daring one.

Tracks like "Hanging Titties" or the title track bet everything on immediate impact: slogans, repetition, deliberately over-the-top obscenity. The effect is often funny – at times almost comical for how far it pushes things – an eroticism so exaggerated it tips into satire. After a few listens, though, a certain structural monotony sets in, between hammering beats, spoken/chanted vocal lines and insistent hooks. It works in a queer club at three in the morning, but much less so on headphones, where the lack of compositional depth becomes obvious.

When Peaches slows down slightly or lets vulnerability show through – especially in the passages that reflect on age, on the post-menopausal body, on the social pressure to "disappear" – the record gains real substance. That's where the provocation stops being mere surface and turns into storytelling. The explicit support for LGBTQ+ and trans communities, reaffirmed at several points and backed by concrete initiatives outside the record itself, also remains one of the project's most coherent and important aspects.

In terms of songwriting, though, the insistence on repeated words and formulas flattens the message entirely. Some slogans leave little behind, and when the political content becomes direct, it sometimes loses bite rather than gaining it.

Still, it's a comeback. And after over a decade of recorded silence, that carries real weight. Because Peaches remains a pivotal figure for sex-positive imagery and for contemporary queer culture. What's more, her refusal to bow to any form of censorship or repression still carries strong symbolic value. But look past the iconography, past the polished videos, past the statement of intent, and this remains an underwhelming work that musically doesn't dare as much as it could in a world full of music brimming with identity-driven statements and defiance.

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04/03/2026