293. The Breeders, "Last Splash"

 


Oh my god this album kicks so much fucking ass.  Like yesterday's entry, it came from the early 90's, I owned it on CD, and it immediately takes me back to a very certain time and place, or places I guess, those places being San Francisco and Santa Cruz in the mid 90's.  

This album coming right after Weezer yesterday sets up such a fascinating contrast.  This album came out within 10 months of Weezer, and they share some indie-rock similarities, but the songs on Weezer are fairly uniform - nasally voice singing pop melodies over crunchy guitar - and the songs on this album are wildly creative and all over the place.  There is just so much musical imagination here.

Let's start with the big single, "Cannonball."  It starts with Kim Deal saying "check check" into a harmonica mic, distorting her voice, before the band kicks in.  There's that guitar riff that's instantly familiar to anyone who was anywhere near an episode of "120 Minutes" on MTV in 1993.  And that messy, chaotic energy that dominates so much of this album.  

There are SO MANY good songs on this album.  "Invisible Man," a paean to a guy who won't commit, with a great melody over just a monster backing beat.  But my two faves are later.  I am not alone in loving "Divine Hammer," an anthem that just gets more anthemic as it goes.  And those harmonies!  I guess when you grow up together like Kim and Kelley Deal did that makes it easier.  And "Saints," just an absolute classic of 90's rock, a song Frank Black wishes he wrote.

It's not all flat out rock; "Mad Lucas" is slow to the point of being almost nonexistent at times, a dirge that nevertheless commands respect all the way through.  "Roi" is a wild instrumental experiment that's fascinating because you don't know where it's going to go.  And who could forget "Drivin' on 9," the sweet penultimate country song that you would think would be wildly out of place but isn't.

I strongly recommend this oral history of the album, published by Spin in 2013.  Parts of the record were recorded in San Francisco, so you get bits like this:

"Kim Deal: I was tired. It was hard. The drive out, rehearsals, loading in. Back then, in San Francisco, the Mission District was rough. To get from our hotel to Coast, we had to walk through the Mission, and every day you had to steel yourself for it — they’re social bums there, extremely talkative."

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, Kim.  Anyway, as you can tell, I love this album and it's been so great having it on heavy rotation these last couple of days and feeling 28 again.  

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? Absolutely.

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