For reasons of quality, as well as the inevitable loss of the shock of the new, 'Fatherf*cker' isn't quite the album its predecessor, 'The Teaches Of Peaches', was. Which is, in a strange way, fortunate for those hipster arbiters of taste who are slightly unsettled at having to explain why they, too, are unsettled by Ms Merrill Nisker.
For it is she, a hotpant-wearing Canadian-born Berliner, who trades under the name of Peaches and the sound of brutally minimalist disco-punk-cabaret electro beats, deadpan rap, slashing, nasty guitars and a lorra, lorra cusswords. If you pride yourself on your worldliness, it's always slightly easier to say you're bored, in the end, than offended. As Peaches' closest points of reference - artist Tracy Emin, comedian/actor Sandra Bernhard and especially the confrontational 80s performance artist Karen Finley - could probably tell you.
But if it's your first exposure to the fragrant Ms Nisker, there's as much to enthral in 'Fatherf*cker' as there is to unsettle. And that's above and beyond the weirdly Amish beard she's sporting on the sleeve in a boundary-pushing provocation that far outdoes the shock value of the quips you'll find in the stylishly stripped-back and punishingly repetitive 'I U She': "Whips, crops, canes, whatever, c'mon baby let's go"; "I don't have to make the choice/I like girls and I like boys".
Sure, her dirty-mouthed exuberance and high-IQ-masquerading-as-stoopid attitude is a deliberately one-note trick - which is probably why it doesn't work so well the second time - of confrontation. Although it's a narrow furrow, it's a compelling one, from the magnificently foul-mouthed 'I Don't Give A...', with its Joan Jett-style bubblegum-punk chorus, via the whiplash beats of a Throbbing Gristle-esque 'Operate' and the stripped-back 'Warm Leatherette'-style menace of 'I'm The Kinda', to the insinuating 'Shake Yer Dix' and the howling Stooges thrash of 'Rock'N'Roll'.
Indeed, of all the collaborations the now-venerable Iggy Pop has been wheeled-out to perform in his critically-respectable dotage, his grinning appearance on this album's 'Kick It' (an alternate-universe take on Meatloaf's and Ellen Foley's 'Bat Out Of Hell' battles of the sexes of Meatloaf) suggests that hooking-up with Merrill is the closest he's come to finding a kindred spirit to his anarchic self of several decades back.
Ultimately, if 'Fatherf*cker' proves anything that 'The Teaches Of Peaches' didn't, it's that Merrill probably isn't in it for the careerist column-hogging shock value after all. A careerist wouldn't have continued to plough the same furrow in the way this album does...which is probably the real reason why the hipsters are faintly disappointed.
