 |
| |
|
| |
Live Review
by SashaS
3-6-2002
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
| The Breeders' Kim Deal-icious |
|
Live: The Breeders
Mean Fiddler, London
Sunday, June 2, 2002
The Breeders are back to re-present the real Deals
Life being what it is – busy, hedonistic, stressful – you often don’t realise anyone (unless personal) is absent until s/he or it comes back. That’s the case with The Breeders, missing in action for nine years, and recently reactivated with the comeback album ‘Title TK’ and a tour. And, how I missed it! In particular that The Breeders are a band that is more needed and relevant now than it had been all those years ago.
The album is such a delight of proportions so badly lacking in today’s ‘punk’. Reunited with Steve Albini, ‘Title TK’ was recorded in analogue and, balls and goals, does it cook!? It is row, basic, spacious, an angular collection of songs, a rough diamond. It is low and dirty, full of tension, it works in a way no nu-punks can ever imagine it doing. With songs like these and a back catalogue to kill for, it was a lot to expect and it got supplied galore – in about 70 minutes.
Having cleaned up, the Deal sisters, Kim and Kelley, are still far from PC: smoking and drinking like tomorrow is going to be terrorised again, this is huge, ambitious, feral show by which we are totally entranced. Whether it is a new cut or one of the ‘(g)oldies’ from either ‘Pod’ (1990) or ‘Last Splash’ (1993) it is a trip. True dope…
Kim’s sour voice gives it an emotional focus on ‘Off You’ or primal ‘Little Fury’ that are compelling songs although it is ‘Cannonball’ that gets everyone baying, singing-along, exploding with energy. The punk spirit is alive and kicks like a new genius… Although the whole oeuvre of The Breeders is down to Kim (songwriting, singing) the rest of the band shouldn’t be overlooked as they deliver low, detuned, deconstructed and dissonant parts right on chord.
‘No Aloha’, ‘Saints’, all other songs are simply triumphant and deeply affecting. Comebacks so often don’t work because they fail to measure up with the original creative period. The Breeders have lost nothing while (temporarily) history-bound and take us back to those thrilling feelings naturally, with an apparent ease. One can imagine that this could be disorientating to a non-convert but the beauty of it all so often turns our legs into yesterday’s pizza… It gets so exciting to forget breathing!
The Breeders are the greatest comeback since Kylie without soft-porn approach and yet they are all about sex. This is an erotic-performance and, aside a woman with a guitar being like a man in a uniform, it is all to do with that husky, oft-kilter voice that is instantly recognisable.
SashaS
3-6-2002
The Breeders’ album ‘Title TK’ on 4AD is available now
|
|
|
