Every Album I Love : 4. The Breeders — All Nerve
Even back in 1993, when my taste in music was barely starting to form and everything seemed exciting and new, I knew ‘Cannonball’ was something extra special. With its stop-start rhythms, distorted vocals and sounds I didn’t typically hear in indie-rock records, it was alien and wonderful. It was the single of the year in the NME, (they also named Bjork’s Debut album of the year that year, both choices which I fully endorse). Their album the same year, Last Splash, was also excellent, even if none of the other songs quite hit me as hard as Cannonball.
Despite their impact on my nascent musical tastes, I didn’t actually listen to The Breeders that much in the decade following Last Splash. This was mainly because they weren’t really around, during these formative years when music was pretty much my whole life. The Deal twins both spent time in rehab, and various band members had side projects. Then, in 2002, they re-appeared with an album, Title TK, and a song perhaps even stranger and more beautiful than Cannonball, ‘Off You’. Off You is a slight fragile thing, soft and beautiful and barely there, one of those rare songs that I love more every time I hear it, even twenty years later.
They were back for a year or two, played some live dates, but ultimately, once again, The Breeders decided to capitalise on writing one of the greatest songs of all time by disappearing. I thought, maybe this is the way it’s going to be. They’ll pop up once every decade or so, drop an excellent album, a truly amazing song, but otherwise hardly be part of my life.
So, I was rather surprised, come 2009, when The Breeders changed my whole world. Admittedly, it wasn’t entirely down to them, but they were the trigger to a life-changing event. They were announced to curate an All Tomorrow’s Parties festival at a holiday camp in Somerset. I was due to share a chalet with a couple I had known for many years, and another friend of mine. Then, a few weeks before the festival my friend pulled out. Fortunately the couple had another friend who would take on the ticket. I had never met her, although we had come to close to meeting a number of times, at engagement parties, weddings and gigs we had both been at.
I was slightly worried, as the the festival approached. What if this friend and I didn’t get on? It could have made for an awkward few days, sharing a room with a stranger. This turned out not to be an issue, to say the least. It turned out we had an awful lot in common, including the fact we had both been listening to Cannonball and Last Splash in our teenage bedrooms 15 years earlier, one of a million tiny connections we would prove to have. Before the weekend was over we were in love, within a couple of years we would be married.
Because of how we met, our feelings about The Breeders will always be intertwined with our memories of falling in love. It was one of those festivals where the bands stay in the holiday camp, close to the fans. As well as playing their show, they would appear on stage with other acts on the bill, and just generally be round and about the festival site. In the daytimes we would be walking hand in hand round the festival, smiling at one Deal sister or the other as they passed us by.
After this, The Breeders went quiet once again. They toured rarely, although we saw them play in London, a 20 year anniversary show for ‘Last Splash’, a night of pure nostalgia, but not more. The years passed by, My wife and I moved cities, settled down, had kids, and The Breeders stayed silent. There was no sign of new music and they seemed destined to remain a band with deep connections to our past, but no part to play in our future.
When a new Breeders album did unexpectedly arrive in 2018, my hopes were not that high. The track record of bands releasing new material after a ten year hiatus is not so great, after all. I should have known better of The Breeders though. After all, it wasn’t the first time they had been away so long only to return triumphantly. And the album, ‘All Nerve’ was indeed a triumph. It may not have had an individual life-changing song, but almost every song is fantastic, from the taut, exciting ‘Nervous Mary’, to the brooding darkness of ‘Walking With a Killer’. There were little nods to the past (the drums in Wait In The Car reminded me of Cannonball, the verse of the title track was a little reminiscent of Off You), but as always The Breeders manage to sound unlike any other band around, including themselves. All Nerve had a fair claim to be the best album of their career, and the best album released by anybody in 2018. I’m not sure any band has the right to be putting out the best record of their career almost 30 years in, but somehow they had done it.
So, when The Breeders turned up in my new (old) home city to play those wonderful songs, it seemed rude for my wife and I not to be there, so there we were. Our first gig together after the birth of our second child, holding hands, singing along, shedding a tear or two. And as we bellowed along to all of our favourites, the joy we felt was not just the joy of live music, not just the joy of a thousand voices in unison, it was the joy of 25 years of our lives flashing through our minds. There we were, in our teenage bedrooms, listening to Last Splash, trying to figure out life. There we were at All Tomorrow’s Parties, experiencing the first rushes of new love. There we were, a family around the kitchen table, tiny and not so tiny heads bopping along as ‘Nervous Mary’ played on the radio.
Very few bands have been a part of my life since I was 13 years old, and ever fewer have soundtracked such an important part of my life. I don’t know what the future will hold for The Breeders. They just cropped up with a tour in my home town again last month, and were excellent as always, but no sign of a new record. They may disappear again for 5 or 10 or 15 years, but whenever they return, I no longer have any doubt that it will be with something wonderful. And even if we never hear from them again, their place in my heart is forever assured.
Originally published at http://markjwray.com on July 8, 2024.
