Album Recommendations | mariteaux

Album Reviews

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The old five-point scale has been retired in favor of just rating stuff 1-10, which allows me a much more nuanced final rating. Still don't take it that seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.

Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable.

The Breeders

[#] Last Splash (1993)

Summer is ready when you are.

Reviewed October 20, 2024
Last Splash album art

I'm not sure there's a more perfect summer rock record than Last Splash. Undoubtedly due to Steve Albini's influence, Pod emphasized The Breeders' strange, darker corners, while Kim Deal and her newly-arranged bandmates (exit drummer Britt Walford and guitarist Tanya Donelly, enter Jim MacPherson and her sister Kelley on same) take the warm June sun to all those corners on Last Splash, coming away with their biggest MTV hit "Cannonball" in the process. Don't think that means Last Splash doesn't have its freaky side—consider the Kenmore sewing machine in the performer credits for that. For me, Pod is the more personally important album, but Last Splash is an equally satisfying, perhaps more accessible, entrypoint into the world of The Breeders.

Opener "New Year" is a two-minute microcosm of the whole album. A slow-motion guitar intro, the distortion mellow and cozy, and a laconic, abstract verse ("We have/Come for light") collides with an upbeat, catchy, chugging chorus ("I am the sun/I am the new year") before all ends up on the floor in the outro. Last Splash certainly expands The Breeders color palette with surfy instrumentals like "Flipside", echoey slide guitars on "No Aloha", bubbling, sleepy vocoder humming on "Mad Lucas", and even a country cover about a shotgun wedding with "Drivin' on 9", but it's Kim embodying her own lyrics for once, the anger on "I Just Wanna Get Along" or the longing on "Do You Love Me Now?", that gives Last Splash its uniquely human flavor in an already messy and human back catalog.

Essential: "Invisible Man", "Mad Lucas", "Saints"
Quintessential: "New Year"
Non-Essential: Nada
Rating: 10/10
Further listening: Download from The Breeders' Bandcamp