The Breeders - Mountain Battles (4AD)
4/5
By: Thomas Hannan
There's something about the initial chords of Mountain Battles' opener 'Overglazed' that's incredibly satisfying, as is hearing Kim Deal singing words you've not heard emanate from her mouth before - it reminds you instantly how much you missed The Breeders, and how them (whoever's in the band at the minute - it doesn't really matter, does it?) actually getting round to releasing an album is an wonderfully special, rare event that doesn't come round very often at all. Things feel right in the world for a moment.
And this continues for a good few bars until the horrible dawn - you being to entertain the idea that this might be one of the dullest songs Kim's ever been involved in (and I'm including 'Stormy Weather', the only bad song the Pixies ever did). Lyrically asinine (the only lyrics are "I can feel it" with a few "oh-oh-oh"s treated with massive reverb) and completely aimless, if pretty enough, you brush it aside because, hey, it's only the first track after all. I'm sure the good stuff's coming.
And indeed, the following 'Bang On' is a little more fun, but it's becoming very clear very quickly that Mountain Battles is going to be a decidedly lo fi affair, far more similar to The Amps one and only record (the marvellous side project that was Pacer) than any other Breeders affair. Gone is the delightfully romantic glow of Title TK - this is bare bones Breeders, and you have to get used to it. The quicker you do so, the easier your passage through life will be.
"I love no one, and no one loves me, I'm a singer. I want no one and no one wants me." So go the lyrics to 'Bang On'. All of them. So, two whole tracks in, and you can find space to write every lyric that's been sung on the album so far on the palm of your hand. Without having to make your handwriting smaller than it normally is. Go wild.
Given the sparse lyrical nature of the opening two tracks, it's tempting to think of 'Night of Joy' as the first proper track here, and it does sparkle beautifully, finally delivering what you hoped Mountain Battles might sound like all along. Here, you clinch what you're going to like about the album - it seems they're going to do the swooning, seductive, cute thing better on this LP than they are the kick ass rock thing.
I think it might just be OK to be a bit disappointed about this initially, because The Breeders kick more ass than perhaps any rock band ever. But remember this - they do seduce quite convincingly, uncomplicatedly, warmly - especially so on 'We're Going To Rise' (people with voices as lovely as Kim's should be made to sing lines like "feel the light on my face" more often, for the good of the planet), and similarly on the gentle waltz of 'Here No More'. Tellingly to the band's mindset during the album's recording, the former is one of only two songs that break the three minute mark, the closing, brooding, unsettlingly ominous title track being the other. This is the Breeders at their most uncomplicated - if things are structurally odd, then they're done incredibly simply, if they're not incredibly lo fi then it's two chord rock all the way - 'Walk It Off' backs me up on that one.
It sounds like they're having fun, but it's all so incredibly simple that it's difficult to get as lost in this as you can in their other records. Things like 'German Studies' sound rushed, half finished, not without charm completely but not possessive of enough of it to warrant particular adoration. What's more, perhaps the only point of 'Spark' is to settle you in for the album's centrepiece 'Istanbul', because it doesn't really have any merit other than a scene setter for this brilliant little tune. The latter revolves around a mesmerising chant of "Where you going? To the city. Where you going? Istanbul" (Istanbul means 'to the city' in Turkish, you see - learn something every day on rockfeedback.com), and the eeriness and minimalism they strive for on much of the rest of the album is achieved here with the best results - it makes you like the bits of Mountain Battles that you struggled with on first listen all the more simply because you can see what they were aiming at. And you enjoy it a lot when they hit the target, don't you? I do. Mmm hmm.
Few tracks here would make it on to a Breeders 'best of'. Things like 'No Way' probably shouldn't even have made it on to this record. But it's completely impossible to do anything other than admire the LP for what it is. Bollocks. I knew this would happen. I spent so long thinking Mountain Battles was a bit rubbish, and coming to terms with there existing a me who could even think that. But writing about it has made me like it more - to the point where I'm in love with another Breeders album.
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