Katrina Fox chats with the controversial omnisexual singer

Her debut album in 2000 featured songs titles like Fuck the Pain Away. On stage she struts around with a strap-on dildo, spits out fake blood and crowd surfs in hotpants. Now the self-dubbed Queen of Electrocrap Peaches is back with a new album, Fatherfucker which includes a song about threesomes (I U She) and a catchy little number called Shake Yer Dix. And with lyrics like 'Eat a cookie, eat a big clit every day, eat a cookie, eat a big dick every day' (Stuff It), it's no surprise that she's popular with queer grrls and boyz alike.

Sitting on a couch in her hotel room in Sydney wearing a baseball cap that proclaims "I love cock", Peaches tells me the new album is about evening things up between men and women. "I'm serious when I'm asking guys to shake their dicks in the same way that rappers are really serious when they ask girls to shake their titties and their asses. In I U She, if I can get a straight guy to sing along with that, if he sings 'I, you, he together', it's great, because I've sang along with so many lyrics telling me the soul of a woman was created below, so it's about the guys singing along with us too."

The title itself is also an attempt to even things up, according to the singer. "I looked at the word 'motherfucker' and thought 'is that really a mainstream word that we use everywhere all the time?' I thought that also needs to be evened out and it was a lyric in one of the songs so it made sense."

While Britney and her cohorts are doing their best to look as feminine as possible on their album covers, Peaches appears on hers in a beard. "I play with gender," she explains. "It was more of an organic thing to the way people responded to me. I'd do photoshoots in somewhere like Paris and people would stop cars and shout 'look at the transvestite'. Sometimes I didn't shave my legs for a show, wore hotpants and some pubic hair would be protruding out and people were like 'shock horror', but hair grows there. It doesn't grow on my face but what if it did? I've seen some beautiful bearded lady calendars."

So she hasn't relied on her looks to catapult her to fame? "Actually I have relied on my looks. I've kept my hair curly, I've not gotten any implants, I have a little bit of a belly and I've said that's my looks. I still wear tight pants - I think I have a nice ass. I'm 37 and I just thought I'm going to present myself as is and hopefully that will inspire people to present themselves as is. A lot of people don't really get it though. It was funny, when I did some performances for Rolling Stone's website in the US, people would write in and say 'I like the music but she doesn't look like Britney Spears, so I don't know if I like it anymore'."

Despite coming to fame late compared with many in the industry the omnisexual (her word) singer has been making music for 12 years, moving from her native Canada to Germany. "I explored avant music and no-wave punk. Eventually the music I listened to and the music I wanted to play would come together. I got a chance on a small label to put out my first album Teaches of Peaches so I moved to Berlin which is where the label was. It's pretty cheap to live there so people go for their creative urges more."

Fatherfucker, which fuses minimalist electronic beats with hard rock and a dash of hip hop, is also an homage to the artists that have inspired Peaches along her musical journey. They include Joan Jett and the grandaddy of punk Iggy Pop, who features on the album in a duet called Kick It. "Iggy doesn't hold back, he doesn't change, he just goes for it. He's 55, still raw somehow and that's pretty cool. And as for Joan Jett - how could she not be an icon for any woman who's interested in rock and roll?"

As well as writing and recording, Peaches also produces her own records. "I do it because I can," she explains. "It's not rocket science - I think a lot of people use technology to make things more difficult where they don't really need to. With the first album, I thought 'I'll just put it out there and see what happens' and that's what people really liked about it."

So what next? The singer's attitude is surprisingly nonchalant. "I don't know. I'm not so calculated as perhaps people think I am because it always seems to just fall into place in the end. I'm just going to ride it out and see." With pals like Iggy and rock chick Pink giving her the thumbs up, it's a sure bet we'll seeing more of her.

Fatherfucker is out now. For more information, including sound and video clips, visit http://www.peachesrocks.com

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