If the personal is the political then No Lube So Rude is a deeply political album. In a new dark age of censorship, from the UK’s Online Safety Bill to the takeover of TikTok by Trump-affiliated right-wing multibillionaires in the US, our right to say and see what we want is being quietly but quickly eroded. Peaches’ new album is a kind of corrective, a brazenly filthy collection of songs that in another age could have instigated an obscenity trial or vanquished a mimsy Victorian. And if a song about someone having bad manners for not bringing lubricant to a sex party is on the puerile side, that doesn’t take away from its power as an act of resistance and provocation, whether aimed at Keir Starmer or enemies of the first amendment.
On top of all that, Peaches’ first album in 11 years is full to brimming with bangers of the first order, such as opener ‘Hanging Titties’, which spits out vulgarity like an LLM designed to emit random filth (“Older than you / Looking so cunt / Oh look at you / All in my cunt / Thirsty much? My hanging titties hit like the punch.”) The Canadian artist has spent the last decade performing with dance troupes, exhibiting sculptures and playing Anna in Brecht and Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins, and if her schtick feels anachronistic on her return, then songs like ‘Fuck How You Wanna Fuck’ and ‘Not In Your Mouth None Of Your Business’ are also a breath of fresh air. Propulsive beats straddle emphatic basslines as Peaches proffers support for Queer and trans communities on a tune, in the latter case, that deserves to be played loud and proud (though maybe not if you’ve got your kids at home for half-term this week).
Recorded in Berlin with producer The Squirt Deluxe, No Lube So Rude is an album of alacritous beats and riotous self-expression with moments, like ‘Watcha Gonna Do About It’, that are oddly redolent of Madonna’s electronic-focused albums from throughout the 10s. In truth, at times it can start to feel a bit one-note, a gratuitousness that becomes overly indulgent where, say, a song like ‘Fuck The Pain Away’ resonates because of the emotional visceralness it infers. Nevertheless, that famous quote so often misattributed to Voltaire stands, as do the words of Peaches herself: “Now more than ever, there are so many forces that just want you to give up and be quiet. If this album can help you resist that, then that’s what it’s for.”
