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Peaches: Impeach My Bush

Peaches: Impeach My Bush (XL Recordings)

Until now, the name Peaches made me think of the character Heavy D played in The Cider House Rules. Good old Heavy gave us a reprieve from Tobey Maguire’s insufferable prepubescence and Charlize Theron’s general horridness, allowing us to reminisce about him and his rag-tag group of Boyz. O, the mischief those lovable rapscallions would get into! These days, Peaches is the alter ego of a different kind of schlockmeister: Canadian rocker/rapper/musical smut peddler Merrill Nisker. On her third record, Impeach My Bush (a brilliant album title if there ever was one), Peaches continues to dish out her contrived mix of sound-alike electronic beats and the occasional rudimentary classic rock riff, all driven by the blatant sexual explicitness of her lyrics. There’s no such thing as innuendo here, and if songs like “Slippery Dick” and “Tent in Your Pants” aren’t meant to make you laugh, then I really don’t see the point. Thankfully, it seems pretty obvious that humor is the goal here, from the album and song titles to the close-up spandex crotch shot of the back cover. And I’ll take the sarcastically slutty antiwar sentiments of the opening track over anything that farty old Bruce Springsteen has to say: “I’d rather fuck who I want than kill who I am told to/Let’s face it, we all want tush/If I’m wrong, impeach my bush.” Nisker’s heart is in the right place with this attempt at tongue-in-cheek vulgarity, but it’s still just an attempt. It’s hard to ignore the uninspired, interchangeable beats, and Peaches’ talents as a rapper and singer are fair-to-middling. Her bizarre fusion of Lil’ Kim, Joan Jett and Andrew Dice Clay seems funny on paper and is certainly unique, but in the end, it’s good for nothing more than a chuckle or two—unless you feel like giving your grandmother a heart attack.