FEATURE:
Hot Like a Cannonball
The Breeders’ Last Splash at Thirty
_________
A few of these features….
PHOTO CREDIT: Kevin Westenberg
may overlap and repeat themselves, but I wanted to include quite a bit of information about The Breeders’ Last Splash. The second studio album from the band (Kim Deal – lead vocals, guitar, Moog, Casiotone, Kelley Deal – guitar, Kenmore 12-stitch, lap steel, mandolin, vocals, Jim MacPherson – drums, and Josephine Wiggs – bass guitar, double bass, vocals, cello) turns thirty on 30th August. What was originally a side project for Pixies bassist Kim Deal, the band soon took off and was her main focus. Last Splash remains their greatest and most revered work. Considered one of the best and most important albums of the'90s, its approaching thirtieth anniversary deserves recognition. If Cannonball is the standout track from Last Splash, there is plenty of gold to be found throughout. Alongside singles such as Divine Hammer are amazing and worthy deep cuts such as Roi and Mad Lucas. I will come to a couple of reviews for Last Splash soon. Before then, there are some interesting features that explain the history of Last Splash and how The Breeders put together their greatest work. Guitar.com discussed the genius of Last Splash for a feature last year:
“It was naive of Pixies’ Kim Deal to think her side hustle wouldn’t hit the indie scene like a cannonball. From its opening seconds’ wailing guitars and throbbing bass, New Year announced the Breeders’ sophomore album Last Splash as a rival to Pixies’ 1988 classic Surfer Rosa.
Pixies’ DNA is entwined with that of the Breeders, evident in both band’s rollicking, throbbing multi-guitar approach, squealing reverb and joyfully smartass lyrics. Deal had already established her reputation in Pixies by the time she released the Breeders’ debut, Pod in 1990. Deal had begun writing for it during Pixies’ Surfer Rosa tour. That record’s hooky, reeling melodies infused both Pod and Last Splash. When Pixies took a break in mid-1992, Deal suddenly had the time and justification to focus entirely on the Breeders. Nirvana recruited them as support on their 1992 European tour and their 1993 In Utero tour, exposing them to much wider audiences and all but ensuring commercial success.
Released in 1993, Last Splash features surfer-garage guitar rock driven by Jim Macpherson’s pummelling drums and Deal’s dreamy, half-dazed harmonies. Deal established her bass chops in Pixies but it was Black Francis who got more of the spotlight.
PHOTO CREDIT: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic
In the Breeders, Deal on rhythm guitar and lead vocals was, well, a big deal. But not the whole deal. Backing her up was twin sister Kelley Deal on lead guitar (as well as lap steel and mandolin) and Josephine Wiggs of the Perfect Disaster and Dusty Trails on bass.
Listening to Last Splash is to work through a twisting thicket of rhythm and lead melodies, sometimes in sync and sometimes not. It’s wild and untamed in the true spirit of garage rock: musicians hanging out in the basement, bouncing along to contagious amped-up guitar mantras.
Lead single Cannonball remains the band’s biggest commercial success. It kicks off with the distinctive drone of Deal’s voice into a harmonica microphone before she repeats “check, check”. There’s the tap, tap, tap of Macpherson’s count-in and then, boom, the bass rumbles in duelling with Deal’s rhythm. The demo version had been titled Grunggae in honour of its melding of vibey reggae with raw grunge, and it’s a label that might well define the Breeders sound.
The lo-fi Cannonball video was directed by Spike Jonze and Sonic Youth royalty Kim Gordon. In it, the camera trails a cannonball rolling on its own mysterious trajectory through neighbourhood streets, cutting to the band performing in a garage. It epitomises the droll humour that characterised the Breeders and their lyrics.
While Pixies’ Black Francis is considered the master of oblique, quirky and downright often obscene lyrics, in the Breeders, Deal proves she has a knack for them too. Even the band’s name reflects their satirical nature and penchant for skewering political commentary”.
I am going to come to Albumism and their assessment of Last Splash on its twenty-fifth anniversary. They explored and dissected a terrific album back in 2018. I think that The Breeders’ second studio album still sounds essential to this day. Definitely influencing artists across multiple genres:
“The opening bassline of “Cannonball” was catchier than anything Deal had done before, a statement she could back up with the assertion that Last Splash had outsold all previous Pixies records (and Frank Black’s solo projects, too). The Breeders’ sharper pop aesthetic fit into the zeitgeist, a slightly more mature companion to the riot grrrl and grunge movements of the early ‘90s. After the messy break-up of the Pixies, Deal was able to put all her effort into her own band, creating a loud manifesto of artistic freedom.
The slow, deliberate start of “Cannonball” feels like friends showing to a party. Everyone is carefully introduced and polite enough, until chaos erupts. At points the track, swinging between swagger and thrash, is indecipherable, lyrics fuzzed past recognition. “I’ll be your whatever you want,” sung in the iconic Kim Deal whisper, is a crystallizing point, a self-aware nod at being an operator in a sleazy industry.
While The Breeders have serious musical chops, as evident from the masterful performances all around, Deal’s singing truly sets them apart. “Invisible Man” has the lusty vocals that can color a song with just a sigh. “I Just Wanna Get Along” is pissed off, the chorus dripping with contempt. “No Aloha” sounds shockingly current 25 years later, and would fit into a new Waxahatchee or Mitski album easily. The contrast of Deal’s girlish sound and punk temperament set off a blessedly long-lasting trend.
The end of Last Splash is where the real feminist gems live. The country twang of “Drivin’ on 9” slyly buries lines like, “Does Daddy have a shotgun? He said he’d never need one,” a wink at those desperate for the women of The Breeders to be younger and sexier. The same sentiment is expressed in a more forward manner on “Hag.” “You’re just like a woman,” is lobbed around with the titular slur, each line sneered and spit out.
The giddy bop of “Divine Hammer” is a bright spot on the album, resplendent with good vibes. The never-ending search for inspiration becomes material for a sweet little pop song, a moment of levity before the hard-rocking instrumental “S.O.S.” Alternatively, “Roi” is a beautiful mess of textures, a smoothed out and shined up Sonic Youth-style noise collage, but without the intellectual heavy lifting.
Certain elements of Last Splash have, in retrospect, outed Kim Deal as a much larger artistic force in the Pixies than originally portrayed. Pixies trademarks appear all over Last Splash, several on “Cannonball” alone. Both the “quiet then loud” pattern and unedited commotion play out with the same drama as “Gigantic” or “Where Is My Mind?” Similarities aside, the effect is never derivative but energetic, like someone excited to get their point across.
Kim Deal understands the pleasure of music, how satisfying a chugging guitar riff or potent basslines can be to the aural palette. Last Splash was a surprising, but not undeserved, success. A stylish music video for an attention-grabbing single (directed by Kim Gordon and a very young Spike Jonze, nonetheless) launched them to MTV-fame. By doing it themselves, the Deal sisters inadvertently positioned themselves as folk heroes to any woman in a band being eclipsed. With Last Splash, they not only moved out from the shadows, they totally changed orbit”.
I am going to round off with some reviews. Highly commending the stunning Last Splash, this is what Pitchfork remarked when they sat down with an Alternative Rock masterpiece in 2013. They were reviewing the twentieth anniversary of the album, LSXX:
“The Breeders began in earnest when Pixies and Throwing Muses came off that first European tour, at some point during which Kim and Donelly decided they wanted to make a record together. They recruited a British bassist they'd met on the road, Josephine Wiggs, and their Boston friend Carrie Bradley would play violin. In 1990, they released the great, eerily primal Pod, which Kurt Cobain loved, cited as an inspiration on Nirvana, and later dubbed, "an epic that will never let you forget your ex-girlfriend." After that, Donelly left to form Belly, Dayton's Jim Macpherson became their permanent drummer, and the Breeders found themselves in search of a new guitarist so they could go back into the studio with the bouncy, grungy demos they'd been writing in 1992. Kim knew somebody back in Dayton. Could she play well? Well, the thing was that she couldn't play at all. But she figured she could teach her pretty quickly, because she was her twin.
That's some of the psychic energy fueling one of alternative rock's most unlikely platinum records and most enduring masterpieces, the Breeders' Last Splash: an indie-famous frontwoman who'd spent the last couple of years feeling increasingly fed up and creatively muzzled at her high-profile day job; an untrained lead guitarist joyriding up and down the fretboard and riding high on the freedom of please, no chops; and maybe above all else a decade-delayed bar band family reunion. It's no wonder that 20 years later, Last Splash still sounds as sloppy and beguiling and warm as the day it was pressed. Although the songs were meticulously crafted and revised, and although the post-Nevermind boom had made the audience for a record this singularly weird suddenly visible, in the end the Breeders sound like a couple of kids from Dayton (and one like-minded Brit) making up their own fun.
Last Splash is a noise-pop record in the fullest sense of both of those words: It is a symphony of feedback but the melodies holding it all together are sweet enough to rot your teeth. From the squalling, rhythmic dissonance of "Roi" to the melodic Lynchian lullaby "Mad Lucas", the record is full of warm, damaged beauty. Fresh off a tour with Nirvana, the Breeders drove to San Francisco in a blizzard to record Last Splash with veteran producer Mark Freegard in the winter of 1993, and the reissue’s liner notes describe the process as a series of sonic experiments. What's that corrosive whir that opens "S.O.S."? It's Kelley's sewing machine fed directly through a Marshall amp, because why not. The distorted vocal on "Cannonball" happened because Kim (who shares a producer’s credit with Freegard) wondered what it'd sound like to sing through a harmonica mic and when they play the song live, they still get that particular tone of the iconic opening vocal ("Ahhhhhoooo-oooh/Ahhhhhoooo-oooh") not through some custom pedal, but by putting a styrofoam cup over the mic. At times they resorted to measures even more DIY than that. The best take of Bradley's warbling strings on "Mad Lucas" was the one where, by her account, "Kim and Kelley grabbed me on each side and shook me and quaked me while I played”.
I will finish with AllMusic’s views regarding Last Splash. I hope that this staggering album gets some new celebration and spotlight closer to its thirtieth anniversary on 30th August. I was ten when Last Splash came out. I think I first heard the album a year or two after its release, though it had an immediate impact on me:
“Thanks to good timing and some great singles, the Breeders' second album, Last Splash, turned them into the alternative rock stars that Kim Deal's former band, the Pixies, always seemed on the verge of becoming. Joined by Deal's twin sister Kelley -- with whom Kim started the band while they were still in their teens -- the group expanded on the driving, polished sound of the Safari EP, surrounding its (plentiful) moments of brilliance with nearly as many unfinished ideas. When Last Splash is good, it's great: "Cannonball"'s instantly catchy collage of bouncy bass, rhythmic stops and starts, and singsong vocals became one of the definitive alt-pop singles of the '90s. Likewise, the sweetly sexy "Divine Hammer" and swaggering "Saints" are among the Breeders' finest moments, and deserved all of the airplay they received. Similarly, the charming twang of "Drivin' on 9," "I Just Wanna Get Along"'s spiky punk-pop, and the bittersweet "Invisible Man" added depth that recalled the eclectic turns the band took on Pod while maintaining the slick allure of Last Splash's hits. However, underdeveloped snippets such as "Roi" and "No Aloha" drag down the album's momentum, and when the band tries to stretch its range on the rambling, cryptic "Mad Lucas" and "Hag," it tends to fall flat. The addition of playful but slight instrumentals such as "S.O.S" and "Flipside" and a version of "Do You Love Me Now?" that doesn't quite match the original's appeal reflect Last Splash's overall unevenness. Still, its best moments -- and the Deal sisters' megawatt charm -- end up outweighing its inconsistencies to make it one of the alternative rock era's defining albums”.
It is not s shock that The Breeders’ Last Splash gets played on the radio. What seems a shame is it is usually only Cannonball. The album has so many incredible songs on it so, as it is thirty on 30th August, maybe this is a chance to explore this wonderful work in greater detail. It still packs a huge punch after three decades. If you have never heard the album, then do make sure you spend some time with. Not only is Last Splash one of the'90s' best albums; this phenomenal offering is one of the best…
THAT there’s ever been.