Music / Grunge
Review: The Breeders, O2 Academy
“Summer is ready when you are.” So ring the final words from Kim Deal at the end of the encore as The Breeders draw Saints to a close. The crowd, having generated plenty of human humidity through twenty-four songs, is positively steaming. It’s damn hot. Clothes are merely a necessary concession to propriety. If we’re not already high on life, lager and the intoxicating odour of sun cream, listening to The Breeders back catalogue, and their brand-new belters, brings the spirit of a beach barbecue to the O2 Academy stage.
We’re dressed for seaside shenanigans. They’re not, although to be fair, we could all imagine The Breeders on the promenade, on deck chairs, tucking into vanilla waffle cones, dressed entirely in black. There’s the amount of standing room available in this sold-out crowd that you can usually rustle up on a Cornish beach in the summer. You can barely gyrate without fear of making the person in front of you feel unnecessarily loved. Big smiles, singing along (there’s a lot of that) and vigorous head nodding have to suffice.
2018’s comeback album All Nerve sustains a decent amount of the set’s focus, proof enough that The Breeders are still current and vibrant. Wait In The Car chimes in early in the set, “Good morning!” a welcome wake-up, even at half nine at night. The album’s title track sounds like they have nerves of steel and Nervous Mary races ferociously and thrillingly.
is needed now More than ever
1993’s Last Splash is the album that most frequently jumps out of the gull-winged DeLorean. It provides three of the first four songs, the Pixies-like rock-out of No Aloha, the exhilarating, breezy jangle of Divine Hammer and one of the most arresting album openers imaginable, New Year which sets the frenetic tone from the very start. They make us wait sixteen songs before unleashing the NME’s single of 1993, Cannonball, the only disappointment being that it’s only three minutes thirty-six long.
Apart from the fact that Kim and Kelley Deal are genuinely related, it feels like the whole band has a whimsical, familial sense of cohesive dysfunction. The Deals tease each other. Josephine Wiggs, on bass, brings a wry English absurdism, like a slightly younger cousin occasionally puzzled by these transatlantic twins. Jim Macpherson sits quietly at the back, like the brother who just wants to keep out of trouble, thumping out some mightily invigorating drums lines in the process. Their cover of The Pixies’ Gigantic sums up what the whole night of their feel-good grunge breeds – “A big, big love.”
Main photo by Michael Brumby
Our top newsletters emailed directly to you
