TORONTO – At some point, Toronto electroclash provocateur Peaches started to find pop music’s fringe a little crowded.

But she welcomes the company.

“I always wanted the mainstream to move closer to me instead of me trying to move closer to the mainstream, and actually that’s what happened,” the Toronto native said in a recent telephone interview.

“It’s an incredible feeling.”

And yet, in a pop landscape where even former Disney stars seem to be borrowing from Peaches’ deep stock of shock tactics and marginalized groups are wresting more sympathy and attention, she faces a new question.

“People are like: ‘Well, Peaches, what are you going to shock people with now?’” she explained with a laugh. “Gay marriage is legal in the States, gender issues are being seriously taken into consideration, and bullying is a whole movement now, and blah, blah, blah, blah.

“Well, I’m going to celebrate it. I’m also going to keep my eye out and make sure it’s not some sort of sensationalist shock trend for everybody else and that it’s actually moving forward.

“So celebrating with one eye still looking out.”

That jubilation manifests in “Rub,” the new album Peaches refers to with considerable affection as her “post-gender or post-ageist celebration.”

That said, “Rub” — her first record in more than six years — is hardly some compromise to convention.

Of course, it’s recklessly funny, features several unprintable song titles — one, called “Dumb (Expletive),” which she considers her “Purple Rain” — and sonics jagged enough to trip Run the Jewels.

“The point was to make it even more raw, with all the great sounds that you can use now — just not polish it up at all,” she explained. “Just make it really raw, and aggressive, but sonically warm.”

Fans who worry about Peaches’ ongoing capacity to shock, meanwhile, should listen to the record’s blackest dirge: “Free Drink Ticket.”

With her vocals pitched down and a rumbling buzzsaw of a beat, she seethes against a “spineless coward” ex-lover whose “personality turned to white powder.”

“There’s this time in a relationship, and it happens a lot where you’re in love and you’re hurt, and that hurt turns to hate,” she explained. “I was writing the album while this was going on … so I captured it.

“I was recording with Jam (Rostron) from Planningtorock, and I asked her to leave the room, and I wrote madly on a piece of paper…. You feel like this person you love, you want to kill them. So I wanted to express that feeling for real.”

And if nothing else, Peaches can still shock herself.

“When we listened back, we were huddled together hugging each other,” she recalled.

“We were so afraid of this monster.”