"Subtle" isn't usually a word associated with
Peaches' music, but it applies to
I Feel Cream surprisingly often. Yes, even though she proclaims someone a "mangina" in one song and herself a "stage whore" in another, this set of songs is often more restrained, and even mature, than
Peaches has been in the past -- and not just because she tells a lover to lick her crow's feet on "Trick or Treat."
I Feel Cream is far more electronic and dancefloor-oriented than her music has been in years; in sharp contrast to
Impeach My Bush's electro-glam rock, this album has absolutely no guitars. It also features more collaborations with other producers than
Peaches' previous work. Along with
Gonzales, with whom she's worked since the
Teaches of Peaches days, she enlists
Digitalism,
Soulwax,
Drums of Death, and her former remixers
Simian Mobile Disco to help take her music in different directions. Some of these don't quite work -- "Lose You," an icy, fragile ballad, is pretty but doesn't quite work as a way to show
Peaches' vulnerable side, and "Mud"'s chilly sound is similarly at odds with her fiery persona -- but most of them do. "Talk to Me" is a standout, with
Soulwax providing an electro-soul backdrop for some of
Peaches' most powerful singing. It's raw, it's direct, and it's nearly as big a step forward as the album's title track: "I Feel Cream" takes the breathy appeal of
Impeach My Bush's "Downtown" and turns it into gauzily erotic disco about love/lust at first sight in the club that feels like the heiress to "More, More, More" and "I Feel Love"'s abstract-yet-explicit come-ons. Only her rap, which rhymes "guitar hero" with "DeNiro" and "Robert Shapiro," makes it obvious that this is a
Peaches song.