- It's probably not an overly popular opinion, but personally, if I was to be marooned on a desert island for the remainder of my days and was only allowed to bring either The Breeders' or Pixies' discography with me, I'd pick the The Breeders every day of the week. Pixies have obviously received more accolades over the years, and will almost certainly go down in musical history as the more significant band, but there's always been a depth to The Breeders' records that their more popular brother band has lacked. The weirdness and quirkiness of Black Francis's act have always had a slight air of being put on, whereas with Kim Deal's outfit it's always seemed as though any eccentricities on display are purely a genuine representation of her personality and musical outlook. The strange song structures and contrary musical decisions always seem to work because they always seem natural, and make perfect sense once you've synced your musical worldview with hers. The infectious melodies, the catchy riffs, those big payoff moments, they're all there. They just need a bit more effort to uncover. That effort - to me - makes The Breeders' music all the more satisfying and makes for a catalogue that rewards over a longer period of time.
All of that said, most people would be forgiven for thinking that The Breeders haven't done much since 1993, the year that their album Last Splash became an alt-rock hit on the back of the (still great) single, Cannonball. In a sense, they're not exactly wrong: those twenty-five years have only seen the release of two more albums, both of which were seen, somewhat, as disappointments in parts of the music press, but which I would argue are just severely underappreciated. 2002's Title TK was a great pop record that was pretty weird, while 2008's Mountain Battles was a great weird record that was pretty pop. Both hold their own against Last Splash and the band's debut Pod in their own understated ways. Nonetheless, it's Last Splash that holds a special place in many listeners' hearts. It's also Last Splash that brought about this new Breeders record, All Nerve. After reuniting the classic band lineup in 2013 to tour behind the twentieth anniversary of the aforementioned album (featuring Deal's twin sister Kelley on lead guitar, bassist Josephine Wiggs and drummer Jim MacPherson), the band continued after the tour finished and began working on new material, materialising now as the band's fifth album.
So how does it compare? Well, in a sense it's the least catchy, least weird, least fun Breeders album; but it's still The Breeders, so it's still plenty fun, plenty weird, and plenty catchy. In a sense it's a fairly 'back to basics' record after its rather eclectic predecessor, Mountain Battles. It shares that album's more mature and reflective vibe, but instead of utilising sparse, fractured instrumentation wrapped about broken song structures, now it's all overdriven mid-tempo riffing over powerful drums. There's a healthy mix of the familiar with the new. Opener Nervous Mary and lead single Wait In The Car replicate Last Splash's opening one-two of New Year and Cannonball; a kind of strange, down-tempo opener that eases us into the record before revving up and transitioning into the album's most overt pop moment. The title track is the most classic 'Breeders sounding' song on the whole record, combining quirky riffs and big dynamic shifts with a slightly wistful feeling that Kim Deal's smokey vocals convey perfectly. It would fit in seamlessly on 1992's Safari EP. But from there we get the spacey post-punk of Metagoth, made even colder by the steely vocals of bassist Wiggs and the spacious verses of Spacewoman giving way to crashing distorted chords in its chorus. Later on we get the Slowdive-esque Dawn: Making An Effort. Each one is new territory for The Breeders, if not exactly new territory full stop.
It all holds together through the strength of Deal's personality, her dedication to her own peculiar muse. All Nerve is not Last Splash: The Return, it's its own beast. On one hand it sounds exactly like you'd expect a thirty-year-old band to sound: confident, self assured, willing to follow its own aesthetic to whatever end. Similarly, it manages to avoid the pitfalls a thirty-year-old band can fall into: it doesn't sound tired, or lazy, or out of touch with what made the band great in the first place. How much of that we can put down to some sort of revitalisation due to the reunion of the classic early ‘90’s lineup and how much we can credit to Deal herself we may never know. We can be sure of one thing, though: it's miles better than anything her old band has put out in decades.
- Cameron Smith.