The cosmic pause button of 2020 happened to arrive at a fitting time. “I was feeling like I had done so much last year; I wanted to just take human moments and go deep into myself,” Peaches says. She had already planned to work on new music when the isolation of the pandemic, and the social justice movement that erupted in its wake, sent her exploring the dark corners and tangled intersections so many have been grappling with in their own ways.
“It really led into a lot of personal reflection, and, like everybody, just brought up a lot of deep pain and anxiety that we need to deal with — and this was the time,” she says.
“Flip This” is the first song on a new album that Peaches says will have “a lot of really angry, dark energy.” She’s still in the early stages of writing, but promises something “a little bit more epic” than what’s come before.
The “Flip This” video opens with “BLM” boldly scrawled across a sheet of white paper. It’s a clear, if uncharacteristically quiet, message of solidarity from an artist whose lane has historically found her plowing a bulldozer, full-hog, into the patriarchy. Peaches is cautious about not centering herself, or presuming to speak for experiences that aren’t her own, in making such a statement. Still, her intended message is explicit as ever: “Now is not the time to mumble,” she repeats in “Flip This.” “Scream it out and feel the rumble / Fuck the system make it crumble.”
“It’s a different experience, being in Berlin, and understanding a different kind of systematic racism that happens here,” she says. In some sense, the song is her way of trying to feel a connection to what’s going on in the States, “on a level where I can feel a part of it, but it’s not about me personally, it’s about all of us.”
Coalition building between movements with common goals can be fruitful; it can also be destructive, Peaches points out, as evidenced by demonstrations in Berlin against government action to control the coronavirus. “Maybe that’s where my mind is, because that’s the kind of coalition that’s going on here right now,” she says. But sowing unity among varied calls for social justice isn’t as simple as singing along to a rallying cry. “It’s not just about coming together and then everything’s okay. There’s a lot of work to be done, and a lot of pain, and a lot of perspectives” that need to be acknowledged at the table, she says.
“Life is just slapping us in the face. There’s no nowhere to run to, and you shouldn’t be running.”
What happens if we manage to flip the world right-side up, and can someday put the teaches of Peaches to use once again — maybe even on a raucous, humid dance floor?
“We’re going to fuck the pain away, I sure hope so,” she says. “Safely and respectfully fuck the pain away.”
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