Getting The Family Band Back Together

When Dayton, Ohio outfit The Breeders first came into being back in 1989 it was largely to operate as a pressure valve for bandleader Kim Deal. It provided her with the creative outlet she felt she was being denied in her day job as bassist for Boston indie-rock behemoth Pixies, then one of the hottest bands on the planet (from a critical perspective at the very least).

Despite these ad hoc beginnings The Breeders continued sporadically for the next few years with various line-ups operating among Deal's other commitments - dropping acclaimed debut album Pod (1990) and strong EP Safari (1992) along the way - but when Pixies finally succumbed to internal conflict and dissolved acrimoniously in early 1993 (frontman Black Francis famously/allegedly informing Deal of the bust-up via fax), The Breeders suddenly became a full-time concern.

Deal had already assembled what's now acknowledged as The Breeders' "classic line-up" - herself (lead vocals/guitar), her identical twin Kelley (guitar/vocals), Josephine Wiggs (bass/vocals) and Jim MacPherson (drums) - the year before to support Nirvana through Europe during a period of Pixies inactivity, so they were primed and ready to ramp things up. When the opportunity arose to get serious the foursome wasted no time creating what would become the band's seminal second album Last Splash, which appeared in August 1993 and quickly went platinum on the back of its catchy and ubiquitous single Cannonball.

It seemed that the world was The Breeders' to conquer. Nirvana tapped them once again to open on their massive In Utero US tour later that year- Kurt Cobain having long ago acknowledged Pod as one of his favourite albums - and they were getting exposed to masses of receptive new fans on a nightly basis. Yet despite - or perhaps because of - this sudden success, this line-up of The Breeders was doomed to burn brightly but briefly. 

By 1995 the band was on an indefinite hiatus, plagued by excess, addictions, arrests and interpersonal relationships that broke down so completely that some band members didn't talk to each other at all for over a decade. Having spent a couple of years with MacPherson in The Amps, Deal would eventually reform The Breeders with her sister and various other musicians for sporadic appearances, even releasing a couple more albums under the moniker - Title TK (2002) and Mountain Battles (2008) - but it seemed that the line-up that had proved so conducive to creating great music was destined to be forever consigned to the musical scrapheap.

Until 2013, that is. By this time Deal had been back reprising her bassist role in the reformed Pixies for nearly a decade, but she jumped at the chance to get the classic line-up of The Breeders together again for one last spin around the block to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Last Splash's success. One by one (often hesitantly) the others signed on as well, the reunion shows eventually going so well that this time it was Deal who walked out on Pixies, leaving them in mid-2013 as they slaved away on what would become their first album in over 20 years, Indie Cindy (2014). 

The Breeders' classic line-up has been together ever since, Deal admitting that she's been loving having the old gang back together and that the dynamic has proved much like the reuniting of an estranged family.

"We really do [have a chemistry], and honestly I really enjoyed playing with them again. One of the first things I had to deal with when I started playing with Jim again was when he brought his drums back to my basement after taking them," she offers in a conspiratorial tone. "He got mad and took them out of my basement - that was in 1998 or 1999 or something like that - and I never saw him again.

"So when he put his drums back in my basement in 2012 and we started playing together, the first thing I had to do was turn my amp up a couple of numbers! In amp world that's really loud. He's just a louder drummer and I just love the way he plays. He's a good guy, he's like family, and his playing I think is very joyous. He has the sound of happy drums: I know that's weird, but he really does; his drums are happy-sounding. When he's playing, it's happy.

"And it was good playing with Josephine: she's funny, she's droll. She's got that dry English humour and she's super-negative, but so is my dad. It's not a bad thing if it works. See, it's just like family, again."

But despite this tight-knit bond having returned intact, new music was still imperative lest The Breeders become a dreaded nostalgia act. With that in mind, for the last few years they've been squirrelled away in various studios working with different producers to record what would become their powerful new album All Nerve.

"Well, we were doing the tour in 2013 for the anniversary of Last Splash," Deal recalls of the elongated process behind the new record, "which we really enjoyed, but then people started booking us again for 2014 and I'm, like, 'Wait a minute, that's not the 20th anniversary anymore,' and they're, like, 'We don't care if you don't play it from beginning to end! Just play!'

"So we just thought, 'Oh, we can do new songs,' so we started working on it after that, and worked on it through 2015 and 2016, mainly. 2014 we were writing, and we were recording in 2015 and 2016."

The album's gestation may have been slow, but it certainly bore bountiful fruit. All Nerve is taut and concise but brimming with fascinating ideas and arrangements, the end product defiantly its own beast but certainly on par with all of its celebrated predecessors. When asked whether the band had a concrete aim for the album when they were setting out, Deal admits, "Not really, we just had ideas. Here's a good example, I had this idea for a song and I could hear it in my head - I heard the beat in my head and everything - and then I showed it to Jim. And when he played it - and, like I said, his foot is heavy - it didn't sound anything like it was in my head, and I realised that there was no way it was going to sound like what it was in my head because Jim doesn't play like the drum part in my head.  

"So it's interesting that I had, like, this idea for a song, but it changed because of the way that Jim plays. And it's the same with Josephine and Kelley and me, too: us getting together and just playing on it, and playing to our strengths, we create the sound like that, for good or bad."

What about the rumours doing the rounds - fuelled by a recent NY Times interview - that Kim actually took Macpherson to a performance by classical vocal group Il Divo to reinforce the precise orchestral drum sounds she was chasing for All Nerve?

"Yes, there is a slight difference [between reality and that story]," the singer smiles. "I did read that piece and think, 'Well, that's not really what happened.' We have a friend from New Zealand who was The Amps' tour manager, his name is Levi Tecofsky, and he's a Kiwi and we worked with him in the '90s - he's a friend - and he happened to be in Dayton doing Il Divo, who he's touring now. And he asked Jim to go along, so Jim and his wife were going and they asked if I wanted to come along, and so I went along.

"And, we happened to be talking about doing more orchestral things in general with the drums anyway, plus when we were there I don't even remember a band on stage at Il Divo, do they even have a band or is it just backing tracks? Anyway, now the story is that I took Jim to Il Divo to talk about their drumming and it's, like, 'Whatever, that's fine. I really want The Breeders to sound way more like Il Divo.' It does make a funny story, though."

The recording process wasn't all beer and skittles though, with some songs just not getting off the ground no matter how much effort was put into them.

"We'd just pull up pieces and some of the stuff didn't sound good at all," Deal chuckles. "There's one song that sounded horrible and Josephine said she was going to quit if she had to try it again. She said it like she was kidding, but I think she was serious."

Deal's lyrics on All Nerve are typically inscrutable and as ever she's not really one for shining any light on possible meanings. "It kind of bounces around a little bit," she ponders of the lyrical content. "It's funny, sometimes it's about things that I wished would turn out better and I sing about it to hope that it would turn out right. Like, I feel super-shame about something I tend to think about it and then... make an opus to it. I don't know, it's weird the whole process."

She did, however, rope in some esteemed Australian guests to add backing vocals to the track Howl At The Summit; Courtney Barnett and her band dropping into the studio and lending their vocal cords to proceedings (Barnett then getting Deal to return the favour and sing on new track Nameless, Faceless from her impending second record Tell Me How You Really Feel).

"Yes, I had met her because of the Talkhouse [Music Podcast]," Deal enthuses. "We did it with [esteemed music author and journalist] Michael Azerrad who does this podcast where artists interview artists, so after [Courtney and I] got done talking we exchanged emails, and we've been pen pals ever since.

"She asked if we wanted to go to a show they were playing in Ohio and I told her we couldn't because we were in the studio, but said, 'Hey, do you guys want to stop by?' They got in their van, and we were actually in Kentucky - just across the Ohio River - so they all tumble out of their van and go into the studio, and they hung out all day and it was really fun.

"And there had been a song Howl At The Summit that was up and playing and I'd always wanted to try a chant so, when I saw so many heads in the studio, I was, like, 'Hey, do you guys mind if I put a couple of microphones up?' So it turned out pretty good.

"But then I made sure to say, 'Hey, if you guys ever need chants or a ukulele on your album let me know!' and I was joking but later she asked me, 'Hey, do you mind doing some chants, or you can even play the uke if you want to!' She was kidding about the last bit, I assume."

The two musicians obviously share a personal rapport, but Deal confesses to being an ardent fan of Barnett's music as well. "Oh yeah, totally. Yeah," she offers without hesitation. "The first time I saw them they did a version of Cannonball that was pretty good, actually, because Cannonball in the wrong hands can be played with spit and polish, and it kind of doesn't sound cool like that. But they were shambolic all the way through it and I actually like music like that.

"Just like her stuff, it almost sounds like Bones [Sloane, bass] and them have heard the song the day before and they're playing along - and I obviously don't think that's true - but I think it's a really cool thing to be able to sound like."

Another All Nerve track that stands out is MetaGoth, which finds Deal and Wiggs trading instruments, the latter even taking the vocal reins for the song, which, as Deal explains, was all part of a cunning ruse to prop up band morale.

"Me and Jim were trying to work out a part, and I was playing bass guitar and Jim was on drums downstairs in the basement - it was just us two - and we were trying to come up with the parts for Wait In The Car," she tells. "But instead we started playing this one thing, and I was, like, 'Man, that sounds really cool, we should make a whole song like that!' So we made a whole song like that, and Kelley comes in and plays her stuff and it sounded really cool. And then Josephine comes into town.

"Now in my mind I know I've got to play bass guitar on that and that she's going to be very, very mad when I tell her, so I say, 'Hey, I'm going to play bass on this song, here you can play my Les Paul and you can sing it, too!' And she didn't get mad at me! At first she was a bit cross, she said, but when it came out in interviews that I only let her sing so she didn't get cross she was like [adopts upper-crust English accent], 'Oh my god, I thought you guys were asking me because you really wanted to hear me singing it! It was just a manipulation so I wouldn't get mad!' And I was, like, 'Aha, it was, and it worked!' She does a good job, it's a cool song."

Despite having come to prominence plucking the four-stringed instrument with Pixies, Deal admits that she's much more at home in six-string territory. "I played the guitar when I was 13, so I've been playing guitar for... a long time," she smiles. "But I enjoy playing bass, I like playing bass very much. But I think of Josephine as a bassist - even though she can play guitar - and I really am a guitar player, but I can play bass, too. But my main instrument is guitar.

"It's interesting because when I played bass for the Pixies and then began playing guitar again I think there was a sense of confusion, people were like, 'Why are you playing guitar?' And I was like, 'Ohhhh, you think I'm a bass player, that's weird! Wow! Cool! They think I'm a bass player, awesome!'"

Another interesting new track is the band reinterpretation of Walking With A Killer, which first emerged as part of Deal's limited-edition solo single series she undertook in early 2013 (while still up to her eyeballs in both The Breeders and Pixies).

"Well, Kelley and Josephine really liked that song, and here nobody has heard of my solo stuff: nobody," she laughs. "Well, maybe a couple of people. But they were just like, 'Hey, we really like that song, we should try that!' because we were just coming up with new things to play.

"When we found that that we didn't have to do Last Splash from A to Z anymore, because it's not 2013 anymore - by this time it's 2014 and the promoter isn't buying that show anymore, like I said, they were just like, 'Hey, we just want you guys to come and play, we don't care what you play!' - so we were trying to work out what to do, and I thought, 'Hey, why don't we try this song, this is new and you guys like it'; it was like a new song that nobody's heard so we started playing it live.

"And when we played it live, it was so gorgeous, I just thought, 'Man, we gotta try recording this, the band version is way better than my solo version.' That's what I think, anyway; I think it sounds way better."

All Nerve even contains a cover of Archangel Thunderbird by German rockers Amon Duul II, betraying Deal's lifelong love affair with kosmiche. "I really do like it, I really do," she admits of the oeuvre. "And I've always loved that song. For decades I would play it and then rewind it, and just listen and listen and listen. So we recorded that originally for a B-side, and then we really liked it and ended up throwing it on the record. Steve Albini recorded us doing that one, and it sounds like it."

And finally, for Australian fans, there's some good news on the horizon.

"We're about to start touring All Nerve and it's going to take us all over the world, even to Australia," Deal beams. "We love playing down there - always have - so we wouldn't dream of leaving it off the schedule. I don't know when it will be just yet, but it will definitely happen. We wouldn't miss coming down there for the world."