Soundbite: Peaches

Normally, a Peaches album is the kind you play in your car to make your friends laugh. You quote lines to gross them out. You tell your parents you’ve never even heard it, and you feel a bit weird when you listen to it by yourself.

“I Feel Cream” doesn’t have the same effect because it is Peaches’ first shot at crafting songs with actual melodies, sans her signature in-your-face arousal. But five albums into a career that has so far produced fantastic titles like “The Teaches of Peaches” and “Impeach My Bush,” a mix of something restrained and cohesive is completely uncalled for.

For those that didn’t know Peaches before, she has never been shy about introducing herself. She starts off “I Feel Cream” chanting “Some call me trash and some call me nasty.” And if you haven’t learned by now, her subject is the politics of sex.

It’s a topic that shouldn’t have been controversial since 1992, after Madonna put out “Erotica,” posed nude with Vanilla Ice and nearly killed her epic career (thank God for William Orbit and Kabbalah). But somehow Christina Aguilera and Lady Gaga have managed to package their sexual images in this hypersexual millennium as something provocative and edgy when they’re really going with the grain more than anything.

Then there’s Peaches, who probably isn’t much smarter than Lady Gaga but was always less interested in charting and knew what to say to actually sound edgy. Whereas Gaga overzealously offers to “take a ride on your disco stick,” Peaches, delivers “Come diddle my Skittle, ’cause there’s only one peach with the hole in the middle” in such a nonchalant way because she knows you’re bound to feel uncomfortable upon first listen.

Peaches wants to make you think. What you’re supposed to think about is uncertain, but the point is that your buttons are pushed, and the androgynous provocateur has marked her territory.

Perhaps confident in what she’s done so far, Peaches delivers “I Feel Cream” with a new sense of lyrical and vocal subtlety. “This ain’t a Peaches show. It’s just me and you,” she chants in “Talk to Me,” as if anyone ever wanted alone time with Peaches.

Although more interested in engaging than provoking her listener, Peaches doesn’t have the conviction to sell synth ballads like “Lose You” and the Donna Summer pastiche “I Feel Cream,” which both would sound sultrier and sexier coming from Alison Goldfrapp, Annie Lennox or even The Pussycat Dolls.

Her promise to “whip this party into shape” on “More” is halfhearted and ineffective, and the production crew she’s recruited (most importantly, James Ford from Simian Mobile Disco) doesn’t always deliver the beats and hooks to carry their weight. Most of the dirty talking is left up to guest rappers Shunda K and Yo Majesty on “Billionaire,” but the two could stand to learn a few lessons on brashness from Lil’ Kim.

In all its subtlety, “I Feel Cream” still manages to have its outlandish moments, like the soul-infused “Talk to Me” or the stomping “Show Stopper,” in which she sings “I’m breaking out of a cage,” as if she were ever in one.

Of course, no Peaches record could go without a quotable line or two, even if we have to settle with “I never go to bed without a piece of raw meat.”

In the case of “Peaches’ Teaches,” even when the music wasn’t all that great, she was something to marvel at for her ability to arouse minds that thought they were sexually desensitized by Xtina’s buttless chaps.

Peaches had a niche in a genre known for its anonymity in female singers, and when any Europop singer felt the need to talk dirty, they were automatically channeling Peaches. Perhaps she fears that the jig is up, or maybe she’d rather give Lady Gaga a run for her money.

Either way, it keeps Peaches from being Peaches and turns her into a whole lot of nothing. My advice: When you crave attention and have nothing to say, say something dirty.

““ Alex Wolf

E-mail Wolf at [email protected].