Psicle: Peaches Xtreme

Sunday, December 13, 2015

Peaches Xtreme

A last minute invite from Simon sees us meet at the Elephants Head then weave our way through the early Sunday evening Camden crowds to the Electric Ballroom. We arrive just in time to see the support band who's name I can't remember but ends in CK. They are a girl duo playing full on euro pop one who drums one drum a bit and sings and the other sings and for a couple of songs plays a weird bass with bit curving out over the neck. Odd. They may be euro pop but they have a hard edge to them and veer into full on disco for a couple of numbers. Drums and disco are definitely the flavour of the month, as we shall see more of tomorrow. They wear short skirts and sing about sexy stuff which is certainly tonights theme but definitely not tomorrows. I'm getting ahead of myself. They sound a bit 80s esepcially when chanting mobile phone, sexy whatever and the like. But their hard edge gets us in the mood for a full on euro sexy poppy night. They go off to an appreciative applause.

For the main course Simon and I weave our way into the crowd to be told off for standing in front of someone's girlfriend. FFS this is a gig isn't it? Simon tells him that everyone will move around as soon as the band are on so don't worry about it. He does but Simon's right of course. Peaches soon takes the stage looking like George Clinton. I don't often comment on the bands costumes but Peaches has more changes than Madonna which often involves simply taking off more clothes until by the end of the night she's wearing virtually nothing. Well nothing that hides her modesty. But I'm getting ahead of myself again. The first song sets the sexy (if you can call it that) scene as Peaches is joined by two lithe figures, boy and girl, or rather man and woman, who are both dressed as giant vaginas who sort of open and close seductively. Well, a lot of the crowd seemed to thing so and like so much of Peaches act there was rapturous applause and shouting whenever these two, or Peaches herself, did something vaguely provocative. Maybe seeing a thin bloke dressed as a vagina or in bondage gear floats the boat of the younger generation but I prefer a more demure and restrained sexiness. This was just downright lewd. However, it was entertaining and I guess went very well with the music. Ah yes, that little business, after all we are at gig. Peaches is the one woman singing, OK, with her two dancers, and no band. Having listened to a bit of her stuff beforehand it seems she's migrated from disco to hard post grime (don't ask me to explain) but tonight is a mix of the two which results in some big clubby anthemic techno neu pop. It feels like it should be in a small grubby dark club with a couple of hundred grooving away with a bit of space, always sadly lacking here, but there again you can imagine Peaches holding court in an arena smashing it with big anthems. We tried our best to dance about and managed to get a bit of space to exercise our legs at times. Simon ventures forward into the throng but gets elbowed back and put in his place. Jeez the youth are up tight aren't they. Let's go out and enjoy ourselves, but we don't want to get carried away do we or let anyone dance near us. Yeah, maybe Peaches and her followers belong at Wembley Arena rather that at Xoyo. The music's pretty good flitting between Madonna and a more modern techno dance beat but it's not full on madness that's for sure. Maybe everyone's spent after the weekend. We are treated to Peaches walking out over the audience (see pic) and one of the props is a huge phallic blow up thing that is pumped up above our heads (ditto). Amusing. One to file in the family album as ticked off but not to be revisited unless bump into her in a tent at a festival.