Raw Deal

>> The Breeders just wanna rock

by LORRAINE CARPENTER

How do you follow a classic album like Last Splash? After nine years of botched bands, personality crises and substance issues, the Deal sisters have conquered that demon, along with Richard Presley and Mando Lopez from L.A. punk band Fear, drummer Jose Medeles, and producer pal Steve Albini. If Title TK sounds more like a second sophomore disc, an extension of their rough-edged, lo-fi, equally Albini-recorded debut, Pod, it may stem from being “all wave,” Kim Deal’s own insignia indicating all-analog taping, producing and mastering. It’s back-to-basics Breeders, the sound of a broken band starting from scratch, a personal victory for Kim and for Kelley, who’s recently traded booze and “the needle” for knitting needles, seriously. Not quite as seriously, the Mirror had a long, weird talk with Kim about technology, journalism and sisterly love (note: italics indicate yelling).

Mirror: What went on after your band, the Amps, broke up?
Kim Deal: I tried to record an album with some guys in the fall of ’97 but the playing was a little weird, it just sounded funny-there’s lots of drugs in New York City, alright? Then, in ’99, I was trying to find players but, at that time, everything was looped and sampled and seamed, even rock music, so nobody wanted to come out of their rooms because they were in front of their monitors at the ProTools. You know, why be in a room with four of five people having to work out a song? I even got people asking for money for practicing, and they weren’t in the band. I just wanted to jam. And all the studios were going to ProTools because it’s cheaper and everybody was eating up white-label hip hop, thinking it was cool. It was almost like indie music in the early ’90s-just because you’re on an independent label doesn’t mean you’re a good band. So the studios geared their systems to their white-label clients, and they’d always put me on fuckin’ digital! It’s like they couldn’t help themselves, it was new toys for the engineers, but it just didn’t sound right. I don’t have a problem with digital, why do they have a problem with analog? I’m not the weird one here. “Can you please put me on some fuckin’ tape?” That got depressing, so I learned to play drums at Albini’s studio in Chicago and it sounded good, so I thought I could finish the record, but I figured out, “Oh my God, I’ll have to hire session players to tour with me!” That didn’t make any sense, hell no, I’m a band person, that’s too weird. So then I went to Nantucket and lost my mind for a minute.

Ford fuckin’ pick-up

M: So you met Fear at a bar in New York?
KD: I actually met them once I stopped looking. Isn’t it weird how that works? I think they thought I musta’ been crazy when I said I’d go out to East L.A. to jam, but me and Richard stayed in contact and his friend Wolfy got me a two-bedroom apartment. I drove my car and my U-Haul out in June, and Kelley lives with me, she came out in July 2000.

M: I heard you had some problems with players along the way-
KD: Oh dude, you read that New York Times thing? I don’t wanna tell everybody these guys are fuckin’ lying but they fuckin’ are, man. If I knew how much money I wasted playing with drummers on coke I would tell somebody, I don’t even know the fuckin’ finances, but that’s my story to tell. And that guitarist, Nate, saying he didn’t know he was going home alone? Yeah, I was in a basement, 16-track recording, and I understand why he was miserable there, the electricity would go off every now and then, you know, it was a shithole. So my dad was going to drive Nate home to New York City. Okay, you have to see my dad, I mean he’s not obese but he’s a big man-how are you going to get four people in the front cab of a Ford fuckin’ pick-up? You can’t do it! For 13 hours home? Three men and me can’t fit in my fuckin’ dad’s pick-up, what the fuck is he saying? He thought we were all going? He’s lying! Which now makes me sound like a fuckin’ asshole!

M: Do you see the current Breeders line-up going long-term?
KD: If nobody quits?! Fuck, or nobody gets busted, Jesus!

M: Are things good between you and your sister?
KD: Oh, it’s never good, she’s my fuckin’ sister! One minute I wanna fuckin’ strangle her, the next I wanna kiss her. It’s just-I hate her, it’s pure hatred and then, in 30 seconds, she’s crackin’ me up. :

With Imperial Teen at Café Campus on Friday and Saturday, July 26–27, 8pm, $20

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