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The Breeders Album Recommendations |
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The old five-point scale has been retired in favor of just rating stuff 1-10, which allows me a much more nuanced final rating. Still don't take it that seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review. Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable. The Breeders[#] Title TK (2002)[come up with a catchy summary here] Reviewed October 20, 2024
After the underrated Pacer saw Kim Deal experimenting with converting Last Splash's warm drone into a sloppy, druggy lo-fi smog, Title TK, by choice or by its bizarre recording history, finds her embracing oddity in a more traditional context. Like the name suggests, Title TK is minimal and unfinished by design. Lyrics trail off and get flubbed. Strange sounds, like the infamous synthesizer burp on the otherwise sad, touching "Off You", pop out of nowhere with no context and no reappearances. "Cammy, why would I want to listen to a weird, unfinished album?" Stick with me here, because Title TK's strange, punky, insidious, iguana-hunting charms can't be denied that easily. Although she's down two Breeders (a later rendition of the band Fear backs her on most tracks), it's Kim's presence, years of drugs later but in fine form, that makes Title TK worth its salt. Her lyrics are filled with odd poetry, in-jokes about pocket knives and beer class, and strange observations about whippits, and it's a trip to hear her and Kelley harmonize and duet with their not-quite-the-same identical twin voices. She also just plain brings great songs, like the jerky stop-start rhythms of "London Song", the aforementioned achy, overdriven ballad "Off You", the creepy drone of "The She", and the barreling "Huffer". No doubt this album's embrace of fuckups-as-aesthetic will frustrate some, but the more enlightened of us know—it's the warts that make it interesting.
The Breeders (as The Amps)[#] Pacer (1995)Rock in rehab. Reviewed September 25, 2018
By 1995, Kim Deal was in a rut. The Breeders were on hiatus, and Kelley Deal, her musical doppelganger, was in rehab. Kim Deal does what Kim Deal does, though, and that means booze, weed, and garage pop abandon. Pacer, the only release from Tammy Ampersand and Her Magical Amp Band, alternates sloppy and motherly like a rough draft for, well, post-hiatus Breeders. It's not that Kim Deal isn't capable of not playing like the Shaggs after a fifth of vodka, it's an aesthetic choice, and one that certainly ruins weaker tracks like "Empty Glasses". The mixing is just as messy—no, really, did a drive-by just blow through here? Because this one bleeds like a motherfucker. In the end, though, the songs win out. The bulk of the tracklist consists of quality tunes that bring to mind fellow Midwest lo-fi enthusiasts Guided By Voices; in fact, "I Am Decided", one of the real highlights here, is actually built from two of their tracks. There's a beauty to this record that overloaded mixes and sloppy playing can't tarnish, most evident on the warm, bubbly fare like "First Revival" and "Bragging Party". Meanwhile, "Full on Idle" proves that even the punkier tracks, when focused, land pretty well (and spits cactus spikes in the face of the later Breeders version to boot). See, even when Kim Deal tries to make something ugly, it turns out lovely anyway. What a curse. (Also, I have nowhere else to mention this, but "Tipp City" mentions "anonymous Internet nations"—and this came out in 1995. Kim Deal was ahead of the curve, man.)
The Breeders[#] Last Splash (1993)Summer is ready when you are. Reviewed October 20, 2024
I'm not sure there's a more perfect summer rock record than Last Splash. Undoubtedly due to Steve Albini's influence, Pod emphasized The Breeders' strange, darker corners, while Kim Deal and her newly-arranged bandmates (exit drummer Britt Walford and guitarist Tanya Donelly, enter Jim MacPherson and her sister Kelley on same) take the warm June sun to all those corners on Last Splash, coming away with their biggest MTV hit "Cannonball" in the process. Don't think that means Last Splash doesn't have its freaky side—consider the Kenmore sewing machine in the performer credits for that. For me, Pod is the more personally important album, but Last Splash is an equally satisfying, perhaps more accessible, entrypoint into the world of The Breeders. Opener "New Year" is a two-minute microcosm of the whole album. A slow-motion guitar intro, the distortion mellow and cozy, and a laconic, abstract verse ("We have/Come for light") collides with an upbeat, catchy, chugging chorus ("I am the sun/I am the new year") before all ends up on the floor in the outro. Last Splash certainly expands The Breeders color palette with surfy instrumentals like "Flipside", echoey slide guitars on "No Aloha", bubbling, sleepy vocoder humming on "Mad Lucas", and even a country cover about a shotgun wedding with "Drivin' on 9", but it's Kim embodying her own lyrics for once, the anger on "I Just Wanna Get Along" or the longing on "Do You Love Me Now?", that gives Last Splash its uniquely human flavor in an already messy and human back catalog.
[#] Pod (1990)Sweet sinister sexual screeches. Reviewed August 6, 2024
Oh, Pod. Where was I when I first heard you? I had to have been 15, in love with my recent discovery of the Pixies in all their howling, mutilated charm—but anyone who's heard Doolittle knows you listen for the siren as much as the screams, and the siren's name is Kim Deal. What a voice, so warm, so unpretentious, one that breaks up when she shouts just like the rest of ours, and yet so somehow dark and ready to tell of such gross things. I put off listening to Last Splash as Pod's bizarre, thumping sonic world and tales of rotten logs, folds of red and steamy air, bad sex and bad TV, opium dens, and threesomes enraptured me, and it's possibly still the crown jewel in Kim Deal's entire catalog. Steve Albini produced this one, rest his soul, and I fail to come up with a better drum sound or a better mix than Pod's. The drums are ambient, round, absolutely huge, and the pin-quiet mix with tons of air between the notes helps keep the atmosphere delectably tense. Bassist Josephine Wiggs and Slint drummer Britt Walford (who put on a dress for this) make a phenomenally tight rhythm section, crawling through the muddy grass in dark, two minute bursts with only Kim's voice and a withering, whinging violin for adornment. It becomes clear how much she enjoys splitting the difference between sweet pop and black subject matter—see the afterlife depicted on "Fortunately Gone", the sexual alienation of "When I Was a Painter", or the stampeding, Beatle-flattening cover "Happiness is a Warm Gun" for the finest examples Pod has to offer. Simply a must-listen.
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