It happens to all of us who hit middle age. Those bands we loved during our youth get back together and start making music again. I’m not talking the ones that get back to get together just for a money grabbing tour then disappear again. I’m talking of those that get back together to make some new music. Sometimes this happens admittedly because the artists' need for money becomes greater than their hatred for their old bandmates. Sometimes though, it happens because the old musicians get bored and forget about how jaded they felt when they walked away from the band so long ago.
And sometimes, not often, but sometimes, people get the old band back together because they still have something to say. They get back together because their original passion for music somehow got rekindled. It’s a rare occurrence but occasionally new magic can happen. Yes, for every great comeback like Johnny Cash’s American Recordings, there are 10 albums like Guns N Roses Chinese Democracy which leave you with the question ‘Why did they bother?’
Last week I finally got round to buying a ‘comeback album’ that I’ve had my eyes on since it was released back in the spring, The Breeders – All Nerve.
Young Again
It’s been 10 years since we last heard from this brilliant but rather turbulent band so ‘All Nerve’ is a welcome return. It’s an album that’s easy to listen to repeatedly and its only 30ish minutes long! There’s something peaceful about it; something that just flows smoothly from track to track. After the first listen it left me feeling young and excited about new music again – a rare occurrence these days !
Quality Tracks
The first four tracks are under 10 minutes long, indeed the opening pair of ‘Nervous Mary’ and ‘Wait In The Car’ are done and dusted within five minutes, a kind of brutalist guitar minimalist. My favourite tracks are ‘Walking With The Killer’ which indicates a continual paranoia and ‘Spacewoman’, which softly compares loneliness to orbiting alone in space, seems to me its indicating a disconnection from the real world. The album’s softest moment, ‘Dawn: Making an Effort’, captures Kim Deal’s girlish voice melting into an all-consuming haze. “Dawn running us down,” she repeats, a line that beautifully suggests the end of one thing and the beginning of something else.
Skinhead #2 is the only real weak point on All Nerve, but that’s only weak in comparison to the rest of the album. Most bands would kill to have written that one.
Re-Captured Energy
All Nerve finds The Breeders sounding more ecstatic and less restrained than at anytime since their ‘Last Splash’ album back in 1993, part of the original alt-rock scene. By not looking back they’ve re-captured the incessant energy that drove ‘Last Splash’, and given us something to take its place. The album also manages to do what The Pixies (from hence where Kim Deal came), have struggled with since returning to the recording studio. They sound like the band that we first fell in love with 25 years ago but without ignoring the decades of trials, experiences, and musical ideas that have come and gone since.
All Nerve isn’t a 90's retro album, it is of its time, but is sounds like The Breeders have never left us. It’s an album that somehow manages to emulate their 90s past - while thoroughly taking the piss out of it at the same time!
The Breeders have still got IT ... whatever 'IT' is !!
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