EX.801 Peaches

The queer icon and punk provocateur talks bodily autonomy, embracing ageing and her new album, No Lube So Rude. Merrill Nisker—known to most of the world as Peaches—has spent 25 years making music that refuses to behave. Since her 2000 breakthrough, The Teaches of Peaches, she's built a body of work at the intersection of performance art, punk provocation and dance music, becoming an international queer icon and a touchstone for anyone told their body or identity doesn't fit. Peaches' new album, No Lube So Rude, is out now on the Washington-based label Kill Rock Stars, also home to the likes of Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney. The title is a meditation on the friction and hostility that define this moment, and a frank reckoning with menopause, bodily autonomy and the systemic erasure of women who refuse to disappear quietly into middle age. In this RA Exchange, Peaches, now 59, talks about making the record after a decade of silence and what it means to keep making confrontational art. Listen to the episode in full.