The Breeders
All Nerve

“I hit the hull, oh God, I hit them all, you don’t know how far I would go”.

"I hit the hull, oh God, I hit them all, you don’t know how far I would go".

Until some time ago, I believed that the "Breeders" were the "Bakers." Aside from this, the Breeders, led by the "in her own way" alt-rock icon Kim Deal, have returned ten years after "Mountain Battles" with their fifth album in thirty years of existence. The lineup is exactly the same as in '93, the one from the epic and unsurpassable "Last Splash," with the sisters Kim and Kelley on guitars, Josephine Wiggs on bass, and Jim MacPherson on drums.

The sound of "All Nerve" is raw and compact, yet it appears as intimate as it is subversive. Constant shifts from stillness to agitation, the ups and downs, and the granite slaps that always pursue a melodic line, the slippery riffs along murky guitars with muted reverberations or sharp and thrashing. The bass is rolling and hypnotic, the percussion is clattering. Kim's voice is angelic, warm, yet capable of becoming powerful. She weaves intriguing harmonies with Kelley that contrast with Wiggs' icy, almost ghostly singing.

The poetics are abstract, with cryptic and laconic lyrics that, though often evasive, obsessively haunt with not always traceable irony. The album offers a comprehensive and mature view of the band. Full of encrusted sugar, dawning mists, and soot. Full of neurosis and impudence.

"Wait in the Car" is a single of suffocating strength. Deal meows, barks, and howls, while the guitars rise and fall with a paroxysmal succession of intoxicating vertigo. "All Nerve" lingers between slow, dazzling verses and propulsive crescendos. Wiggs is the lead voice in "MetaGoth", marked by dry percussion and a sneaky bass. The cold, detached, imperturbable singing gives the track a clotted charm of darkly troubling post-punk beauty. The guitars add lyricism with drones of feedback that melt the riffs into a dark atmosphere. The dynamic shifts are the backbone of the ballad "Spacewoman", which furthermore pours out ambient bites of analog synth hisses.

"Walking with a Killer" is the story of a murder in a field of wheat. It is told from the victim's point of view: “I didn’t know it was my night to die, but it really was”/ "I didn’t know it was my night to die, but it really was". The guitars fry an almost mute threat, a noir breath swallowed by distortions that dissolve into the elemental throb of the bass and the melodic line of the flexible and tender voice. The song is a re-recording of a sparser 7-inch from 2012 by Kim Deal.

Then there's "Archangel’s Thunderbird" a cover of Amon Duul II. The rhythm section is poured into a powerful and witty groove, while the Deal sisters seize that kraut (art) rock gem with a more twisted and possessed singing than ever. If one guitar is circular and hypnotic, the other is sharp and zigzags forward. "Dawn: Making an Effort" has the face of a candid hope perceived in the expansive growth of a dawn; it pours frail feedback over a leading song that literally engulfs "honey and milk" in the mouth. "Skinhead # 2" instead boasts the most disorienting and trivial rhyme: “I need spit to crush these beetles on my lips” / "I need spit to crush these beetles on my lips". And a sumptuous chorus: “Tough kids love sad songs/ They sing along/ Sing for me” / “Tough kids love sad songs/ They sing together/ Sing for me”.

“All Nerve” is “Last Splash Pt. 2”? No! "All Nerve" is a great tension between bravado, strength, noise, tenacity, vulnerability, suspense, incisive or congested rhythms, but also relaxed. A mixture of sugar crystals and black powder. "All Nerve" keeps you on edge, captivates you, leaves a mark. It does not regret the past, but tries to recapture that electrifying and heated energy once more. The anti-diva Kim Deal has returned at 56, in splendid form.

Then the music will change you over time, but without rusting you. Which is liberating.