The Breeders 'Mountain Battles' album

The Breeders started as a Boston supergroup, featuring the Pixies' bassist Kim Deal (writing most of the songs and playing guitar) along with guitarist Tanya Donelly from Throwing Muses, violinist Carrie Bradley of local heroes Ed's Redeeming Qualities, and a couple of out-of-towners: Slint's drummer Britt Walford (who called himself "Shannon Doughton" and later, ahem, "Mike Hunt") and British bassist Josephine Wiggs (from the Perfect Disaster).

Donelly and Walford left, and new drummer Jim MacPherson arrived, before the Breeders hit it out of the park with the summery alternative landmark Last Splash (1993) and its Alternative chart smash, "Cannonball." After a six-year absence, the Breeders will return April 8th with a new album, "Mountain Battles." The 4AD set features sisters Kim and Kelley Deal flanked by Jose Medeles on drums and bassist Mando Lopez.

"Mountain Battles" is the follow-up to 2002's "Title TK." Since then, Kim Deal has been on tour and recording with the reunited Pixies.

biography
The Breeders was the name of the occasional duo act Kim and Kelley Deal performed in Dayton, Ohio in the early 1980s. In 1989, while a member of the Pixies, Kim resurrected the name for a project she intended to record with her friends Tanya Donelly (then of Throwing Muses, later of Belly), Josephine Wiggs, bassist for the British band the Perfect Disaster, and violinist Carrie Bradley.

While recording a song with the Pixies in Chicago, Kim met drummer Britt Walford of the later-legendary Slint, and he agreed to play drums for the project, provided he could use an assumed name. Britt was concerned about his involvement overshadowing or interfering with Slint, a band of close friends who had been playing together literally since childhood.

The Breeders retreated to Edinburgh, Scotland, and recorded the album Pod (released in May 1990, with Britt Walford credited as "Shannon Doughton") with Steve Albini, with whom Kim had previously worked on the Pixies album Surfer Rosa. Pod was completed well ahead of schedule, and with studio time already booked, The Breeders recorded a Peel session in the spare time.

At some point in here, after Pod was released, the Pixies broke up. Nobody seems to know for sure how or when that happened, but everybody agrees that it did. Kelley Deal joined the Breeders for the recording of the Safari EP (released in April, 1992), which was also the last release to include Tanya Donelly and Britt Walford (credited on that record as "Mike Hunt"). Britt, who had become even more reluctant to be identified with the band, was replaced by Jim MacPherson, who Kim had seen in the Dayton band Raging Mantras. The Breeders were now a full-time band for real, and began touring more extensively.

The Breeders (now comprising Kim and Kelley Deal, Josephine Wiggs and Jim MacPherson) recorded Last Splash in San Francisco while living on houseboats. As one does. After its release in August of 1993, the band toured with Nirvana, sold a couple million records and scored a big hit with the song "Cannonball." If you've never heard any of the Breeders other songs, you've certainly heard that one. It's the one that goes "A-woooo-ah" in the beginning and has the bass part that goes "Ree-di-di-di da-dum dum dum, Ree-di-di-di da-dum dum dum." The video for that song was directed by Kim Gordon (of Sonic Youth) and later-famous skateboard jackass filmmaker Spike Jonze. The Prodigy sampled part of "S.O.S." for their big hit "Firestarter." Christ, they're everywhere. This line-up also released "Head to Toe," a vinyl-only EP in July of 1994.

The strain and raucous lifestyle of touring took its toll in several ways. Kelley developed a drug problem, which caused much-documented disruption, including a run in with The Law, about which the less said, the better. Clearly she needed some time to recover. Josephine wanted time to live a more stationary life in her adopted home base, New York. She did many things, including recording with the Kostars and her own solo projects, and generally developed a full itinerary that precluded playing with the Breeders, for the time being. Kim was still anxious to make more records and play more shows, so she formed a new interim band with Jim MacPherson, The Amps, who released the album "Pacer" in 1995 and toured the world.

Somehow during all this activity, Jim managed to father a couple of children, and began to feel the pull of a normal family life. Kim would have to start again. In the summer of 1999, she and Kelley recorded a session at a studio in Austin, Texas, and another session at Electrical Audio in Chicago, beginning the first batch of songs to be completed for the album. As a practical matter, Kim recorded most of the instruments on these sessions herself, because she had lately been having trouble finding people with the mettle to play in a band. More about that later.

Kim decided that the album would use no computers, digital recording, "auto-tuning" or any other mainstays of contemporary production. This was largely a defensive move, as there had been a few previous sessions marred by the engineers' insistence on accommodating these gadgets, and by choosing not to use that technology, Kim could avoid its inherent cliches - cliches that would have dated the record.

This marked the inception of the "All Wave" philosophy, which, loosely stated, is that everything would be an analog sound recording of someone playing or singing, rather than a computer generating a simulation, or digitally manipulated sounds separated from the dimension of time in which they were performed. A parallel drawn with the "new realist" film movement (including Lars Von Trier's Dogme 95 school) is not inappropriate.

The All Wave philosophy carried through the entire production and mastering process, including mixing, editing, sequencing, post-production and the exceptional step of an all-analog direct-metal master for the vinyl LP version of the Title TK album and the Off You EP which preceded it. Kim commissioned the lovely little "All Wave" logo you will find on these records in an effort to identify them, and possibly start her own movement. This should not be construed as a call to arms, but could become at least as significant as the Ska revival or perhaps the WNBA.

In the winter of 1999-2000, Kim met the members of the indestructible veteran Los Angeles punk band Fear at a bar in New York. Sensing instantly that these were brilliant and confident men capable of anything, she invited them to play informally that evening with her. In a move that makes "leap of faith" sound timid, she decided that night that she would move to East Los Angeles, where the band resides, and begin playing in earnest with them as a new incarnation of the Breeders. These men, guitarist Richard Presley (distant relative of Elvis Presley and nephew of Hope Sandoval from Mazzy Star), bassist Mando Lopez (one time video beefcake hottie) and drummer Andrew Jaimez rehearsed and wrote songs together for most of the year 2000.

Andrew was sharing his time between the Breeders, Fear and several other projects, and eventually decided he couldn't dedicate sufficient time to the Breeders. The band recruited another East Los Angeles friend, Jose Medeles to complete the lineup. These four, augmented by Kelley Deal, constitute the Breeders, and this group completed the album with another series of sessions at Electrical Audio, and Grand Master (in Hollywood, California). Steve Albini was the principal engineer for the Electrical Audio sessions, though "production" was the exclusive domain of Kim and the band in collaboration.

This was not the first attempt Kim had made to record some of this music. In 1997, Kim had formed another band, rehearsed, recorded demos and made an aborted attempt at a recording. When her new band dissolved in the act of recording, Kim also tried rehearsing and recording with informal assemblages of friends, to little effect. The frustration at not being able to complete an album emboldened Kim to learn to play the drums and embark on what might have become a one-woman album. The pure chance that introduced Kim to the current Breeders (and the band's maturation into an ass-kicking rock band) made the record's ultimate completion something of a personal triumph for Kim.

Title TK was released in May 2002, a month after The Breeders headlined both weekends of the All Tomorrow's Parties festival at Camber Sands in southern England. In late 2002, the band appeared in an episode of the final season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, performing "Little Fury".

The Breeders will return to the UK in November 2005 to play two dates as part of 4AD's 25th anniversary celebrations 1980 forward.

- By Steve Albini

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Tracklisting

The Breeders - Mountain Battles