AT FIRST glance, there’s nothing particularly unique about The Breeders’ practice room in the basement of Kim Deal’s house in Dayton, Ohio. Wooden stairs lead down to a hastily soundproofed room, a drumkit at one end and stacks of guitar cases at the other, fairy lights hanging from the ceiling and posters on the wall commemorating the band’s recent escapades – in this case, a scarcely believable Ohio VetsAid benefit show from last November at which The Breeders played with The Black Keys, Nine Inch Nails and James Gang featuring Dave Grohl.
But what comes as a surprise is the sheer tidiness of the place. For a group with a reputation for barely controlled chaos, The Breeders must have the most organised rehearsal space in rock. “You see the labels?” says Kim proudly, her camera lingering on the shelves of neatly arranged plastic tubs containing anything one might need to wig out at a moment’s notice. “Guitar straps, strings, adapters, digital RCAs…” She perches the camera on a drum stool and flashes that famous full-beam smile. “It took so much work to get them like that.”
JOSEPHINE WIGGS
These are the two sides of Kim Deal that make The Breeders such a perennially compelling musical force. The gaps between albums may be long, but when they do arrive, they cut straight to the heart of things with joyful incision. A conversation with Kim and her band is as wild and freewheeling as you’d imagine, constantly derailed by uproarious in-jokes and bawdy anecdotes. But when it comes to making the music, they switch into a different mode: focused and rigorous, determined never to do the same thing twice, able to channel their natural exuberance into taut bursts of skewed bubblegum
