“It isn’t about every song being some genius home run. Music is more eclectic than that. Records are more eclectic than that. That’s why “Wild Honey Pie” is on the “White Album.” —Charles Thompson
Mountain Battles is the Breeders’ White Album. Maybe I’m supposed to woo you more, suggest and insinuate with all kinds of flowery descriptions of what this album sounds like (and don’t worry, it’s coming), but there it is, my big, wet, sloppy kiss to you and also to this record, which has made my ears born again. It’s the kind of album that shatters the critic’s system of stars, grades and whatever ruler is put up to the latest offerings, but there you have them up above there. The otherwise venerable Onion A.V. Club, for example, gives Mountain Battles a C+. calling it “shapeless.” Are we beyond the point of no return where albums have to be a string of easily digestible hits, served up one right after the other? Maybe Mountain Battles’ spectrum is so wide ranging it’s hard for those with impaired senses (like music critics) to understand, even though the Breeders lay it out quite simply on the first two tracks. Opener “Overglazed” is an ethereal echo, an easy refrain shout-sung over swooping guitar riffs and an excitable drum track. The follow-up, “Bang On,” then counters as a lo-fi, staticy hopscotch tune with lyrics that seem deliberately unfinished, though the otherwise vivid insert artwork (by Pixies veteran Vaughan Oliver) leaves them out. The third track, “Night of Joy,” finds us in the dead center and is the sweetest black hole lullaby you could possibly lose yourself in. The title, alas, does not reference (in any discernible way) the low-rent strip club in Confederacy of Dunces, though it wouldn’t be hard to imagine the spacey Darlene humming this to herself as she practices her “routine.”
It feels like New Orleans haunts this album, if only from afar. The weirdest moments on Mountain Battles happen in the perplexing but enjoyable “Istanbul,” where spooky organ stabs and abstract call-and-response vocals summon the same kind of sonic mysteries that get cooked up late night at the Spellcaster Lodge. When you sing like the Deal twins, you can get away with practically anything and they prove it over and over again, especially on their cover of the Spanish ballad, “Regalame Esta Noche,” which the Breeders perform without a trace of irony or any of their abrasive texture.
A lot of Mountain Battles happens in twos (easy enough with twins at the helm) and “Here No More,” follows up on the delivery of “Regalame…” as a simple country-folk tune. Kim Deal has shown her penchant for country music before (Pod’s “Fortunately Gone” and Last Splash’s “Drivin’ on 9”) but “Here No More” reaches the farthest into the past and pulls a long-lost hymn into this millennium. The wake up call of “No Way” ends the music history lesson and recalls the swagger of “Cannonball” without all the bells and whistles of that song, as if it were stripped down to its stoner-jam roots and recorded on a cassette four-track.
The range of this album is reflected in the collection of engineers and studios that the Breeders used, from Steve Albini in Chicago to Stagg Street in Los Angeles to the Deal’s hometown of Dayton, Ohio to just “The Basement,” (where ever that is) with NOLA’s own Ben Mumphrey engineering. The Breeders are peculiar in their information, simultaneously crediting each engineer (including assistants!) and studio but keeping us guessing at which song was recorded where. The heavy hitting drums and steely gargle of the bass in “Walk it Off” seem like obvious Albini staples but the lack of specifics suggests it stays in the family. Either that or it’s just another way the Breeders like to leave their business unfinished, giving us all something to wonder about.
Mountain Battles is global in its reach (lyrics in German and Spanish) and national in its production (spanning from Chicago to Los Angeles) but the Deals’ hearts are clearly in Dayton, where they chose to have their release party—at a VFW hall of all places. (The footage can be found at breedersdigest.net.) The Breeders, joined only by a small camera crew and a few friends, enjoy their newest album as it plays (vinyl, of course) through a home stereo set up on a folding melamine table. The video, which spans the length of the album (played in sequence), explores every angle of the hall, from the chips, soda and humble party decorations to the portraits of soldiers and the trophies of the veterans, to the needle gliding along the top of the record. In our jaded, irony-drunk culture it’s easy to anticipate some kind of surprise around the corner, like what is this rock band, complete with well-publicized demons, going to do at this outpost of patriotism and war adoration? Kimberley (so says her duct-tape name tag), upon digging into the record-shaped cake congratulating the band, simply states, “When you don’t do drugs, you feel everything!” And that’s ultimately what this album sounds like: the exploration and fascination within the confines of a space, where imagination and creativity can make even the most sparse or barren landscape, in this case the present state of rock and roll, come alive. And isn’t that what a perfect album is all about?
5 out of 5
Review by Dan Fox.
This review first appeared in ANTIGRAVITY Vol.5 Issue 7 (May ‘08).
