The songs of the Breeders, ever since the outset, seemed to exist to scratch one particular hook, feeling, or comment out of Kim Deal’s little black book of ideas. Even if these ideas didn’t have anything to do with one another, or sounded as if they were borne of a mistake (the lopsided, erratic “Cannonball,” the group’s biggest success, being a prime example), their best albums benefited from this repeated sense of accomplishment and discovery. This sensibility allowed Pod to play out like a diary being read aloud; its success, and the stature of its membership–Pixies, Throwing Muses and Slint among them–helped to engender the rambunctious, good-natured response of its follow-up, Last Splash, right into the alt-rock bonanza of the early ‘90s. Here was a band we could trust; a group that could accompany us through the good times and unburdened freedom surging through our culture.
The goodwill, it seems, didn’t hold up, through the band’s high-publicity hiatus due to drug busts and a shift in output (Kim with the Amps and Kelley Deal with the Kelley Deal 6000, both stalled follow-ups), as well as a public that had moved on beyond the free-for-all promises of the Breeders’ hits in favor of less difficult sounds. 2002’s comeback, Title TK, felt turgid and rushed, making the build-up for Mountain Battles a little less than urgent. Yet what we have here is the band dealing with uncertainty: with themselves, with each other, and with the world they left after Last Splash. And it’s made for their most vital music in that entire span of time
What we have here is a pensive record, an album arranged backwards, it seems, filled with slow, uncertain ballads and chunky, first-thought experiments that mostly work despite themselves. It’s not outwardly odd, but each track dutifully takes one idea down, works it out, then moves on. Some fare better than expected: “Night of Joy,” a cool, candlelit sleepwalk through ringing, clear guitars and a snaking backbeat, astounds with its tenacious choral pattern, holding out as long as possible before its shift back down to a breezy, minor-chord struggle with its own uneasiness. It’s the album’s early standout, and the track that lingers the longest after it rolls to a close, providing the weight necessary to give rousing, albeit lightweight, offerings like “German Studies” (a vehicle to recite German text over a loose-limbed halftime rocker) and the torchy, occasionally jarring slur of “Spark” the support they need to prop up the album’s middle.
Their A-list material here, between the Pixies-esque swagger of “Walk it Off” and cheery bright uplift of “It’s the Love,” still manages to coexist with the fuzzy scrap and slowed-down drums of “No Way,” and the unadorned drone of the title track. It speaks to where the Breeders have been; a prevailing theme of anger and isolation in the lyrics punctuate the supposed realities of what they felt while there. There’s nothing here you haven’t heard on any other of their records, but the sense that Mountain Battles was earned more than deserved never fades into the background, and in that context makes it their most vital release to date.
