The filthy, gorgeous Peaches last released a new album, Rub, ten years ago but has barely taken a moment since. Although best known internationally for her hot and heavy club music, particularly the surprisingly soundtrack-friendly ‘Fuck The Pain Away’, and gleefully outrageous body positive live shows, the Toronto artist born Merrill Nisker is truly a woman of parts. Unsurprisingly, she was one of the first women to have her breasts immortalised in 2001 by the late artist Cynthia Plaster Caster. ‘I’m number 11 and 12,’ she says proudly.

Speaking from her longstanding home city of Berlin, this renaissance electro punk outlines a fertile past decade of art activity, from high to DIY, all shot through with trademark Peaches mischief. In Hamburg, she formed a dance troupe called Clusterfuck, specialising in sculptural movement. In Stuttgart, she performed Bertolt Brecht’s ballet chanté Seven Deadly Sins, putting her stamp on the role of Anna I which was originated by Weimar cabaret star Lotte Lenya and later recorded by Marianne Faithfull.

‘It ended up being a Peaches show,’ she says. ‘The theatre were really excited because they thought their older patrons would protest. But actually, these older women came to me after the show and said: “I never got to show who I am, I never got to say what I wanted and this was really empowering for me.” So it was really exciting understanding that people still have a fire in them. It’s a lot different from when we were young and what our parents and grandparents would scoff at; now I think the older generations are the more punk ones and they’re the ones saying “let’s go”!’

On the subject of righteous ageing, Peaches recently revisited her rendition of Yoko Ono’s legendary performance work, Cut Piece, joined Shirley Manson in covering ‘Why D’Ya Do It’ for a Marianne Faithfull tribute album and proudly wore her Pam Hogg catsuit out and about on hearing of the Paisley fashion designer’s passing late last year. ‘I really, really loved Pam,’ she says. ‘When Pam walked in a room you just felt so alive. Such a beautiful compassionate person with a huge punk heart.’ Arguably her most Peaches move was to mount a large-scale exhibition of new art at Hamburg’s Kunstverein, titled after her song ‘Whose Jizz Is This?’ The inspiration? A disparaging online review of a sex toy called the Double Masturbator. ‘I am all for people using whatever they need to do whatever they do; it’s not hurting anybody. I was trying to figure out how to do some work and use what I’m all about but without me being there.’ So, of course, the show was interactive, animatronic and a whole lot of fun.

‘I thought about all these sex toys and how they all have the apparatus to get together and have their own life and have sex with each other,’ she continues. ‘So I imagined that they would rise up and say “no more humans, we don’t need you”. We had therapy sessions. The Double Masturbators would talk about being left in the corner, never being washed and thrown around. There was a big fountain called the Whose Jizz Is This? fountain where they were jizzing on each other in a commemoratory sense. It was an allegory of empowerment and taking control.’

Peaches is also feeling allegorical on her new album, another thumping electro dispatch on sexual politics, bodily autonomy and freedom of expression with the typically witty title No Lube So Rude. ‘My core is that people need to be who they need to be and nobody has autonomy over that; it’s your own. That goes for abortion rights, that goes for trans rights, that goes for queerness, that goes for marginalised groups. Nobody else can tell you who you need to be. If they need to do that, why? Is it greed, is it power? Makes no sense but it happens all the time.’

Explaining the album title, she says that ‘the world is full of friction and very tense and we need some lube to let us ease into conversations and be able to interact with each other, whether intergenerationally or politically opposed. Lube is not just for menopausal women and it’s not just for gay men who have run out of poppers; it’s good for everybody and it’s also something that you should bring as an offering in the way you would bring a condom. It’s not something shameful, it’s important, and if you don’t bring it then it’s rude.’

Whether that applies to her forthcoming tour dates remains to be seen but there’s no doubt that Peaches will bring the art party, pulling together her manifold talents for costumery, choreography, prop and set design as well as her mighty pipes. While the signature Peaches sound features a lot of sprechgesang intoning and chanting, she can let rip in a variety of vocal styles: the 20th anniversary tour of her classic The Teaches Of Peaches album included a barnstorming cover of Celine Dion’s ‘It’s All Coming Back To Me Now’. Even more impressively, she’s toured a solo version of quintessential rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar (called, of course, Peaches Christ Superstar) in which she takes on the roles of Jesus, Mary and Judas. Quite an undertaking.

‘That’s my style. I wanted to be a theatre director when I grew up and I wanted to make cool musicals, which didn’t fly very well in theatre school. I didn’t realise I was a musician at that time but once I did then I realised I could be my own director, build my own world and have my own music in it. It always comes from the music first but this is how I like to express myself.’

No Lube So Rude is released by Kill Rock Stars on Friday 20 February; Peaches is touring the UK from Friday 17-Monday 20 April & Friday 14 August.

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