The Loudest Person in the Room Is Usually Right

Peaches has never been the quiet type, which is exactly why her voice in support of Pussy Riot carried the weight it deserved. The Russian trio had just been sentenced to two years in a penal colony for performing their punk prayer in a Moscow cathedral—a direct provocation aimed at Putin, dressed up as art, which is precisely the kind of thing that earns you prison time in countries where the joke has too much truth in it. Peaches, whose entire career is an extended middle finger at comfortable sensibilities, didn’t need much convincing to get loud about it. The Free Pussy Riot movement was gathering musicians across Europe that summer, and here was someone whose name alone made conservative audiences flinch, adding her particular electric-freak energy to the cause. It felt correct.