Peaches is renowned for her sexually explicit songs and her latest album is the most provocative yet

If there is one thing Peaches knows about it is crossing lines. Emerging at the start of the new millennium, she made a name for herself through her electro-rap mash up that delivered a gender-spinning manifesto (“Shake Yer Dix”) and sexual explicitness (“Lovertits”). Despite burlesque-style live shows that featured fake blood and dildos, she still infiltrated the mainstream going toe-to-toe with Iggy Pop on their duet “Kick It” and collaborations with Christina Aguilera and REM.

Six years after third album, I Feel Cream, the 46-year-old vocalist returns after a break from recording with belated follow-up, Rub, with its updated, more seductive sound. Over a glass of red wine, she describes needing a change after two years of touring Cream. “In any routine you have, no matter how exciting, it’s still a routine –and mine was very privileged and inspiring – but should I be doing this again? It was almost like a treadmill, or Groundhog Day-type feeling.” Not that there was any break from creativity. In the past few years, the artist, brought up as Merrill Beth Nisker, has devised the stage show Peaches Does Herself, which became a film, sung the title role in a production of Monteverdi’s opera L’Orfeo and produced an all-girl group from Taiwan.

For each project, Peaches has pushed and tested herself in different ways. “I’ve used my voice in ways I’ve only done in karaoke, with the range and everything. I’ve had the chance to try that really over-the-top style in one place, rather than that rock performance, pirate-style that I do.” If one project stands out, it is starring in a one-woman, performance art version of Jesus Christ Superstar – Peaches Christ Superstar – that involved tenacity in securing Andrew Lloyd Webber’s agreement, plus the endurance to play all the key roles. “I was playing 10 different characters – Pilate became my favourite – singing all kinds of ranges and trying to bring it to a raw and real place, expressing my love for this musical without the religious leanings, because I don’t have any.”

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So in 2014, after a year when Peaches had ironically “toured” the film festival circuit with Peaches Does Herself, she felt ready to start a whole new chapter, for, as she admits, she is not the sort of lyricist that writes every day. “I’d got all my guilty pleasures out, then I got excited about [writing] again, about the questions that need answering right there; a spontaneous current.” Peaches splits her time between Berlin, the creative hotbed that has inspired much of her career, and Los Angeles, where she had converted a garage into a home studio. She chose to record Rub there with long-standing friend, multi-instrumentalist Vice Cooler.

“[Berlin] is so exciting, I get distracted by everybody else’s work; all the fantastic contemporary art, experimental work and music. People say Berlin was better when the wall was up or when it had just come down, but I think it’s even better now. You were a walled-in city, it was a bit too inclusive.” Rub contains some of Peaches’s most accessible, melodic work, even including the caustic “Dumb Fuck”, though the combative performer denies recent side projects have helped her develop a singing voice. “I’ve always sung and always had melodies in my head , but when I started Peaches it was important for me not to over-sing because I wanted my message to come through and didn’t want to be seen as a singer.”

What has emerged, though, is a more personal bent to Peaches’s writing that began with revealing her vulnerable side on I Feel Cream’s “Lose You”, followed on Rub with evidence of a relationship turned sour in the melodious ‘“Dumb Fuck” and the rawer character assassination of “Free Drink Ticket”. It’s a welcome departure, though Peaches claims she has written about the end of a relationship before. “I’ve never written such an angry song or directed my anger [like this], maybe I’ve masked it in a more fun way. [Debut album] The Teaches of Peaches was actually a break-up album, but you wouldn’t know it. ‘Free Drink Ticket’ is that moment where you’re so angry because you’re hurt, you’ve loved so much that you hate them.”

Peaches originally recorded the track in Berlin with another close friend, Berlin-based musician Planningtorock, still so livid she asked her collaborator to leave the room. “When she returned to play it back, I was in the corner going ‘It’s terrifying...’.” “Free Drink Ticket” stands out as the rest of the album feels less confrontational than previous works, while tackling similar subject matter. “It’s more of a celebration than a struggle, because things are shifting and there’s more discussion. I’m not naive about it, things are moving exponentially in every direction. There are more opportunities to assert yourself, but in Germany the Nazis are rebranding themselves as hipsters and vegans.”

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Likewise, Peaches has found her DIY sensibility much easier to impose. In terms of guest appearances, Rub is a stripped-down affair, with cameos from fellow Canadian Feist and a laid-back vocal from Kim Gordon on lead single, “Close Up”. The solo artist has also left previous label XL to self-release this album, filming promos for each track, with Mexican wrestlers on the single and a provocative piece of performance art on “Light in Places” (it literally shines out of Empress Stah’s posterior). “It’s a really good time for someone like me who loves to express myself through music videos because there’ll always be a way to show them, without pandering to a Nineties MTV. You can go as hardcore as you want.” And on this evidence, hardcore is what Peaches remains.

Peaches’s album ‘Rub’ is out on I U She Music