Why is your forthcoming album your first in over a decade and who is/are the “you” in comeback single Not in Your Mouth None of Your Business? k4ren123
I’ve been very busy – touring, working with dance troupes, performance art, sculptures, playing the lead role in a production of Bertolt Brecht’s The Seven Deadly Sins in Stuttgart, and on and on. Then, finally, I started on new music. The “you” in the single are people who feel they have the right to have autonomy over other people’s bodies and make it unsafe for people to be who they want to be. I’m especially talking about queer and mostly trans rights. The song’s like a mantra or chant, a way to empower people in only a few sentences.

As a fan of your concert costume design as much as your music, what can we expect from the upcoming tour? Kelechica
I was thinking about sustainability and went to a costume sale at the Berlin opera and bought a bunch of opera costumes. I’m working with Charlie Le Mindu, who is transforming them into weird new creations. In the video for Not in Your Mouth, I’m wearing my sister’s leather jacket. It’s just been the fifth anniversary of her passing, and I wanted to keep something of her, so I kept her leather jacket that she wore the crap out of since the 90s. So, in a way, she’ll be in the show.

Your album titles – The Teaches of Peaches, Impeach My Bush and now the forthcoming No Lube So Rude – are like rallying cries wrapped in provocation. Does the title come first or does that crystallise once the songs have taken shape? VerulamiumParkRanger
The title is always the last thing to come, once I have the big picture. No Lube So Rude is the name of one of the songs, which is about how we can help the friction of the world. We need to smooth it around a little because we have so much irritation and dryness.

Is it true that you used to be roommates with Feist in Toronto? What was that like? seoalwat
Yes – she was making her album Monarch (Lay Your Jewelled Head Down) and I was making The Teaches of Peaches. We lived above a queer sex shop called Come As You Are, where they’d do porn workshops for women, and lectures, but we lived a few floors up so customers never wandered upstairs. Feist and I got along really well and had amazing parties, then we’d go into our rooms and make our albums. Our music was completely different, but we were similar in terms of socialising, and were constantly crushing cockroaches or trapping mice. Our scene in Toronto was very vibrant. Even though we all had different bands, we had a Super 8 film collective and would support each other. Chilly Gonzales had a riff-rock band called Freedom; we also had other bands like the Permanent Stains. Feist would be my B-girl in my early Peaches shows. I’m still good friends with her.

As a long-term resident of Berlin, do you think it’s losing its edge? meansardine
I think the whole world is losing its mind, to be honest, and moving towards crazily dysfunctional gentrification and a wealth gap. Berlin is feeling it like everybody else. Politics and club culture are changing, but I still feel there are pockets of the city that you can cling on to, and we have to keep fighting a good fight and find our place. I moved there 20 years ago because it was cheap and there was lots of space. I felt there was a big creative openness and that what I was doing was more understood there than in Canada at the time. The politics are complicated now – funding is being cut and such – but it’s still a great place to be creative.

Were you really in a band called the Shit? Topcat89
I was – with Chilly Gonzales, Mocky [Dominic Salole], who produced some Feist albums, and another member, Sticky [Henderson]. In about 1996, the four of us got together in a basement. We’d smoke a lot of weed and yell whatever we wanted to about what we felt about each other sexually or how we were feeling. It was very impulsive and improvisational. After our first jam, we changed instruments, which was the first time I ever played drums or bass, and I fell in love with keyboards. We just said, “Oh my God, we are the shit!” so named ourselves that. Our live album never came out, but [we] did put out a cassette tape, which had an early version of [Peaches’ 2003 song] Operate. It was actually a very important period for me – when I went solo I kept the Shit attitude.

Fatherfucker is still my go-to karaoke song, much to my daughter’s discomfort, but I feel like our generation of riot queer artists were louder, angrier and more demanding. Is it different working creatively and politically in 2025 v 2005? SUSE____
I think it feels important to realise that there’s a younger generation that listen to me, but there’s also an older generation that are not going to stay home and sleep. That’s a wild shift: the older generation is still feeling that punk energy, but the world is a more pressurised place compared to 20 years ago. That’s why I don’t want to water things down, so I give it like I give it, but with the punch of 2025.

What do you do in your downtime? Any mountaineering, birdwatching or collecting antiques? mattsketch
I drink wine, sleep … I don’t really have much extracurricular stuff because I have so much going on all the time, but I do like a game of ping-pong. I think I’m pretty good, but I just love the sound of the ball and it’s so good for the brain and coordination. There’s a 2012 movie called Ping Pong: Never Too Old for Gold, about older people who play table tennis. One of them was 100 years old, which is so inspiring. I hope I’m playing ping-pong when I’m 100.

Have you got any more plans to collaborate with Christeene? DrMagic
Christeene [AKA “drag terrorist” Paul Soileau] is like a sister, and we’re always talking about collaborations, although there’s nothing concrete. In 2019, when Christeene started the project to honour Sinéad O’Connor, I sang Troy. It’s such a powerful song and I can really belt it out. Sinéad’s first album influenced me a lot as I was going from folk music to understanding dance music, and she had all that. Also, she had a hit song, Mandinka, about genital mutilation, and sang it at the Grammys in a bra top with [the] Public Enemy [logo] etched on her head because they’d been boycotted by the Recording Academy. Just incredible. She also had her baby’s bib in her back pocket, because her record label told her if she had a baby she would never make it. Just a brilliant artist.

In 2009, the Flaming Lips covered Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon album and you guested on The Great Gig in the Sky. Are there any other vintage records you’d like to breathe new life into? McScootikins
The Dark Side of the Moon was incredible to me when I was quite young, so to be asked to sing Great Gig in the Sky was a challenge, but one I revelled in. I ended up being the backup singer for the whole show, which was really fun. Otherwise, I sing the entirety of Jesus Christ Superstar as a one-person show, with a piano player. I do that live, but I would like to record it – use my voice in a different way.

The world mostly knows you as a sexually charged rapper and “shock” performance artist, but do you have any music outside the concept of Peaches sitting on a shelf somewhere? cleverguns
I don’t, actually, but it needs to happen. I’ll start with power ballads and see where it goes from there.

• Not in Your Mouth None of Your Business is out now. Peaches’ seventh album, No Lube So Rude, follows in 2026