Peaches delivers raunchy taste

If Peaches never existed, she surely would have invented herself.

In fact, that's exactly how Merrill Beth Nisker, a 41-year-old former drama teacher from Ontario, transformed into Peaches, electroclash's preeminent erotic provocateur/party animal.

For the last 10 years, she has been transgressing the boundaries of good taste and common decency with album titles such as Impeach My Bush and trashy retrofitted '80s dance music that advocates fornication as the palliative cure for the pain and boredom of modern existence.

In the process, she has built a swelling cult of gender freaks, hipster geeks, and hypersexual misfits, all of whom were generously represented in the TLA audience Friday night when Peaches kicked off her tour with a rowdy and randy performance in support of her new album, I Feel Cream.

Decked out in a ridiculous puffy-sleeved harlequin outfit and a blond wig that positively screamed "girls' field hockey coach," and backed up by the three-piece band Sweet Machine - which featured a Suzi Quatro lookalike on guitar - Peaches gave her people what they wanted: 90 minutes of shock, schlock and strut.

"How's all you Peaches virgins doing?" she asked the half-capacity crowd a few songs into her set.

Locking eyes with someone in the front row, she said, "I promise I'll be gentle with you," and then, presumably addressing someone sturdier, "With you, I'm not so sure."

Not content to simply stand at the mic and sing, she surfed across the heads of the crowd, tightrope-walked along the parapets of the TLA, wielded an illuminated fluorescent light tube like a light saber, and for the last few songs, performed with a blinding white light affixed to her, ahem, bikini zone.

Her set mixed the subtler sing-songy balladry of the new album with the salacious cocaine sex jams of earlier albums, including the full-metal-jacketed "Kick It," and her signature song, "F- the Pain Away."

Now, don't get me wrong, I love Peaches' moxie. But I can't wait for hipsterdom to get over the '80s. I did it 19 years ago and I've never felt better.