Gig review: Peaches, London

THE London version of the Sundance festival may not yet have replicated its American parent’s knack of unearthing stellar talent while keeping its discerning cachet, but it’s early days yet for an event which began in 2012.

Peaches - IndigO2, London

* * *

By incorporating a more musical side, Sundance London is already finding its own feet

Canada-born, Berlin-residing, globally uncompromising electronica queen Merrill “Peaches” Nisker neatly combined both aspects of Sundance with a 6pm UK premiere of her self-written, self-directed film, Peaches Does Herself, followed by a concert at Indig02.

The film was essentially a low-budget, dialogue-free sequence of Peaches songs, although she later claimed it had a narrative.

She made more sense live. An undertow of performance art compensated for there being no band, but there were fake penises and a couple of under-dressed dancers who often chased Peaches around stage, Benny Hill-style. Mostly, though, this was a woman on her own; donning a fat suit for reasons never explained and opening with Michael Sembello’s Maniac, reinvented as a lament.

Peaches may not be one for compromise, but as she pounded and pummelled her DJ console, she was never less than watchable. Talk To Me was a monstrous, almost alien, plea for understanding, while the throbbing Boys Wanna Be Her was electropop at its most fist-pumpingly raw.

A long evening but not one without its pleasures.