The Breeders - All Nerve (2018)

yeah... Wait in the Car, Nervous Mary, Spacewoman and Howl at the Summit sounded huge live!

Desperately hoping they hit the studio and put something out before the next ten years or whatever.

I had no idea there'd been massive lineup changes in the interim between Last Splash and now, until people at the show were so effusive about it being the "original" lineup playing.

the Last Splash lineup only did that record and then split after about 18 months of playing; they reformed for a 20th anniversary tour (then including session/touring vioinist Carrie Bradley), and have now been back together for five years and a second record.

(The 2008 album Mountain Battles and 2009 EP Fate To Fatal are the sole time the exact same lineup has made two records, but the only change between 2000 and 2008 was a third guitarist leaving. Kim regrets not making The Amps that year's lineup of The Breeders, though.)

years when I didn't keep up with the Breeders: 1995-2018

oh well title tk is a really great album

I'm giving Mountain Battles a spin right now!

Ha, yes. I have a similar gap.

Listened to this album for the first time today, pretty good! I must admit I've never been a huge fan of the band (even Last Splash, which like this one I sort of lose interest in after a little bit) but there were moments in it that really hit the spot. There is nothing objectively wrong with it, the singing or playing or writing, just not necessarily my thing right now.

Had Kim done anything before the Pixies? I've always wondered if she would have released anything had she not been in the Pixies, not least because there are a striking number of sonic similarities between the Breeders and the Pixies.

> Had Kim done anything before the Pixies?

She was in a band called The Breeders with her sister Kelley!

Kim and her identical twin sister Kelley were introduced to music at a young age; the two sang to a "two-track, quarter-inch, tape" when they were "four or five" years old,[5] and grew up listening to hard rock bands such as AC/DC and Led Zeppelin.[4] When Deal was 11, she learned Roger Miller's "King of the Road" on the acoustic guitar. In high school, at Wayne High School in Huber Heights, she was a cheerleader and often got into conflicts with authority.[5] "We were popular girls," Kelley explained. "We got good grades and played sports."[4] Living in Dayton was for her like living in Russia: a friend of Kelley's living in California used to send them cassettes of artists like James Blood Ulmer, Undertones, [Elvis] Costello, Sex Pistols and Siouxsie [and the Banshees]. "These tapes were our most treasured possession, the only link with civilization".[6]

As a teenager, she formed a folk rock band named The Breeders with her sister. She then became a prolific songwriter, as she found it easier to write songs than cover them. Deal later commented on her songwriting output: "I got like a hundred songs when I was like 16, 17 ... The music is pretty good, but the lyrics are just like, OH MY GOD. We were just trying to figure out how blue rhymes with you. When I was writing them, they didn't have anything to do with who I was."[7] The Deals bought microphones, an eight-track tape recorder, a mixer, speakers, and amps for a bedroom studio. According to Kelley, they "had the whole thing set up by the time we were 17". They later bought a drum machine "so it would feel like we were more in a band".[8]

Following high school, Deal went to seven different colleges, including Ohio State University, but did not graduate from any of them.[4] She eventually received an associate degree in medical technology from Kettering College of Medical Arts[9] and took several jobs in cellular biology, including working in a hospital laboratory and a biochemical lab.[10][citation needed]

so are there early recordings? do they sound like the Pixies a little, too?

I still feel bemused that this is one of my favourite albums of the year.

why bemuse?

Well, there's been a long gap since I listened to the Breeders and its not particularly close to what I'd normally listen to these days. I think I've said up thread that if I'd seen a Breeders album in anyone's end of year list, I'd have presumed they were just being lazy. But, but, but ... fairly by chance, I heard a fucking brilliant 4ad mix on NTS (I think I've only ever played the Autechre and 4ad mixes) and it resonated with me. I ended up making myself multiple 4ad compilations (for the car, for friends). This included a handful of Breeders tracks and found myself intrigued by what they might be doing in 2018.

it's a completely awesome album and i recommend listening to it

otm

Can you capture what you like about it?

idk all of their records are fucking good for different reasons, this one’s like what if the last splash lineup made something as deep and mysterious as pod, the songs are pretty much all simultaneously full of hooks and open-ended and strange

idk all their albums are open-ended and strange and full of hooks. It's impossible for me to explain what separates this from that one.

I realise I have only said the circumstances in which I heard it and the vague idea that "listening to the Breeders in 2018 seems odd". "Open ended and strange" is part of it: certainly I couldn't really say what many of the less obvious songs are about, even when they resonate with me somehow. Like, I love "All Nerve" and the first half always reminds me of someone specific and the second half doesn't.

I love this album and it's one of my favorites of the year, easily. I'm bummed that it didn't appear on ANY end of year lists, as far I can tell.

It's turned up on a few lists for sure. The 2018 lists thread may have some of them...

a quick search turned up: Mojo and Uncut

Heard a little of this for the first time this morning, and it does sound good.

"listening to the Breeders in 2018 seems odd"

Part of their charm beyond the music is that for a long-running rock band, their history doesn't follow the typical rock band arc in any way. Other than heroin problems. It's as disjointed and compellingly odd as Deal's writing.

I don't think there's any "comeback" record that made me as happy as this one did

They're all comeback records, kinda!

It is my understanding that these songs - at least I think most are - are about Kims experiences dealing with her mothers Dementia. I think she has been looking after her for a while.

I've heard that said before. I think you could play the album loads and not reach that conclusion (though it does seem likely given what we know).

https://pitchfork.com/news/the-breeders-josephine-wiggs-announces-new-album-shares-song-listen/

I realised I've never heard the Josephine Wiggs Experience album. New song is very pretty, reminds me a lot of Hans-Joachim Roedelius
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_NQSuxIQhk

that is really an alternate dreamy universe compared to the breeders directly into the face approach. a little on the cutesy/mellifluous side of things.

cutesy/mellifuous covers most of her 90s stuff - with Ladies Who Lunch and Dusty Trails at either end. cool to see that Jon Mattock is at least involved with this - Honey Tongues and The Josephine Wiggs Experience were both duos of the two of them.

has there ever been a more iconic but awkward fit than the breeders and 4ad/vaughan oliver aesthetics?

The worst was the Last Splash anniversary box set with awful new artwork.

Title TK's cover is fairly blah.

I appreciate that the artwork isn't too easy, but once the novelty faded i haven't been fond of how text/font heavy 4ad's artwork tends to be.

the whole 4ad thing is all very soft-focus, ethereal, sophisticated and british. lots of text and different typefaces like you say whereas i see the band and their music as being very dry, american, suburban and working class or something? even something vaguely contemporaneous like lush worked better with it as they were at least british and their aesthetic sound-lineage from things like the cocteau twins; the obvious analogue to the soft-focus aspect of the 4ad cover style.

i dunno, all those recent self-released kim deal singles have these really "designed", layered image-heavy assemblages on the covers too, so she clearly just likes that stuff and wasn't just stuck with the 4ad house style. just seems

in some ways it kind of works to differentiate them from their time. if all of their covers were standard '90s sebadoh/pavement/gbv-ish collages or that kind of naive anti-photo thing with some scrawled text on it they would blend in more maybe? the presentation being slightly at odds with the content has an interesting way of gilding it or framing it differently.

Good summer for this record

I'm in the mood for them to chuck out another album fairly speedily. Fucking love "All Nerve".

I played it yesterday!

xxp This band has a remarkably ugly set of album covers, IMO

The covers don’t suit the band’s sound for sure.

disagree x2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brutalist_architecture

except in font/layout/design, definitely fits with the savagely precise music IMO

Walking With A Killer video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xBwXJkxlPI

love it

Nice video but still getting used to the album version of this as opposed to the first 7" version which was so great.

They don't seem radically different?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NtcXD3cefuA I mean obviously it's the same song but the original version seems more sure of itself to my ears but maybe that's just the one 'heard it first must be best' thing going on

Holy fuck this album

it's so good

Been spinning it a lot lately too - loving Josephine's bass tone, it's thunderous.