Toronto, ON · electroclash · electro-punk

Peaches

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Electroclash provocateur — filthy drum-machine minimalism and a live show designed to make you uncomfortable, then make you dance about it.

Peaches is the stage name of Merrill Nisker, born in Toronto in 1966 to a culturally Jewish family whose grandparents had come from Poland and western Ukraine. She faced antisemitic taunts from classmates at a nearby Catholic school as a child, and as a teenager appeared in stage plays alongside future Barenaked Ladies singer Steven Page. She worked as a teacher before committing to music.

In the early 1990s she played in folk and jazz-leaning groups, among them the trio Mermaid Cafe, whose name was borrowed from a Joni Mitchell lyric, before releasing her debut solo album, Fancypants Hoodlum, in 1995. That year she joined the Toronto band The Shit with Jason Beck, later known as Chilly Gonzales, taking the name Peaches from a Nina Simone lyric. She lived above a Toronto sex shop with her friend Feist, who sang backing vocals and toured England with her around 2000.

Nisker relocated to Berlin and built the persona that made her name, signing to the label Kitty-Yo and releasing the EP Lovertits followed by the album The Teaches of Peaches in 2000, home to her signature song 'Fuck the Pain Away.' Her records pair drum machines, cheap synths and stripped-down electro beats with blunt, deadpan vocals about sex and gender, leaving the words nowhere to hide. A European deal with Sony ended after she released a video depicting her body hair growing to absurd lengths.

She became a central figure of the early-2000s electroclash scene, touring behind 2003's Fatherfucker, which she wrote and programmed herself, alongside acts including Marilyn Manson and Queens of the Stone Age; its single 'Kick It' featured Iggy Pop. She has since worked across theatre, film and opera-adjacent projects, among them John Malkovich's short film Hideous Man, and had her bust cast by groupie-turned-sculptor Cynthia Plaster Caster. Her live shows still draw on costume, prosthetics and audience confrontation as much as on the songs themselves.

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