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To be a Breeders fan during the band’s first go-round — as who among the ’90s indie-rock set wasn’t? — was to live in a perpetual state of frustration. Following a knockout debut, 1990’s Pod, the Breeders took four years to deliver the slightly less impressive but no less enjoyable Last Splash. And then . . . well, and then not much. Singer-guitarist Kelley Deal’s 1994 drug arrest and rehab program put the Breeders on an official hiatus, at which point the rest of the band began going their separate ways. Kim Deal, who’d finally come out from under the shadow of the Pixies and into her own as a bandleader, moved to Dayton and took up the drums.
The band that recorded Last Splash never re-formed, but last year’s Title TK picks up pretty much where that album left off — equal parts noise and sweet melody, a quirkiness worn on its sleeve, and a barely there erotic energy spiking tracks like “Sinister Foxx” and “Huffer.” Though not a boisterous “comeback album,” there’s nothing on Title TK to indicate it was ever intended as such. Instead, it sounds like the Deal sisters’ testimony to surviving through trouble — raw in places, but still as romantic. And just a little ill-behaved.
