Project Description

THE BREEDERS

@ Sydney Opera House

30/11/18

Live Review 

Reviewer: Alec Smart

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The Breeders performed at the Sydney Opera House on 30 November. Although they’ve not set foot on these shores since 2013, the fans’ favourite line-up consisting of the Deal sisters (identical twins Kim and Kelley), Josephine Wiggs and drummer Jim Macpherson that reformed in 2012, played to a packed audience in the Opera House Concert Hall. Although the name ‘Breeders’ was used by the Deal sisters for a folk duo they formed in their teens, the contemporary version of The Breeders began in 1989 when Kim Deal, bassist in The Pixies, got together with Tanya Donnelly, then guitarist of Throwing Muses, whilst The Pixies were on hiatus. A critically-acclaimed album, Pod, was released in the interim, which the troubled Nirvana singer-songwriter Kurt Cobain hailed as his favourite album.

 

A year later The Pixies disbanded, so Kim, who felt creatively stifled in the group, was enabled to focus her songwriting talents on the new project. In time, Kim’s twin sister Kelley joined a revised line-up of The Breeders (Donnelly went on to form Belly) and in 1993 they recorded the commercially successful Last Splash. This included the singles Divine Hammer and Cannonball, as well as Drivin’ On Nine, No Aloha and tonight’s encores, I Just Wanna Get Along and Do You Love Me Now; catchy, edgy numbers that typify The Breeders’ alt-rock style of bittersweet melodies.

 

They were all received at the Opera House to a rousing reception, Cannonball especially propelling the sit-down audience into a dancing mass, which made me wonder why rows of chairs were stationed all the way to the edge of the stage. The Opera House Concert Hall is a wonderful arena to appreciate music. Although, traditionally, it has been used for classical concerts, opera and ballet, the layered, genre-defying rock melodies of The Breeders– alternately soothing then fast-and-abrasive, sometimes within the same song! – were magnificently captured. Kyle, “from the basements of Dayton, Ohio,” also joined them on keyboards for one song.

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The band played under predominantly blue and mauve spotlights whilst abstract-expressive images were projected on the screen behind – initially a brick, then variations on the brick, or photos obscured by swatches of colour – whilst patterns, dots and swirls strobed the ceiling above the audience. These effects worked well with their new song, Spacewoman. The new video clip that promotes this release features Kim walking through a forested valley in an orange space suit, clutching an acoustic guitar, after what appears to be a cataclysmic spaceship landing. She eventually encounters her sister, clutching an electric guitar and transfixed by a glowing orange ring of fire in the sky. They throw their guitars into the ring of fire to be consumed by a boiling ocean before they too walk towards the ring. Surreal!

 

Bassist Josephine, who remained fairly static throughout the night, beyond chewing a piece of bubblegum that must have retained its flavor for over an hour, occasionally fired soap bubbles into the air from a bubble-gun. On her song MetaGoth, from the band’s latest release, 2018 album All Nerve, she took over guitar and vocal duties while Kim plucked the bass. There was a fair amount of good-natured banter between the sisters. For Driving On Nine, Kim announced, “Kelley’s going to sing the original violin parts – they’re just as good as the record!” When Kim was experiencing difficulties with her guitar strap prior to Kelley singing, which necessitated the guitar tech’s assistance, Kelley declared that Kim was trying to upstage her to deny her moment on lead vocals.

 

Covers included the John Lennon-penned Beatles’ number Happiness Is A Warm Gun, and grande finale Shocker In Gloomtown by Guided By Voices, incidentally from Dayton, Ohio, Kelly and Kim’s hometown. Perhaps the best reception came with the Pixies’ song Gigantic, which Kim herself co-wrote with Pixies’ main songwriter Black Francis. The crowd sang along enthusiastically to the bawdy lyrics, inspired by the film Crimes Of The Heart, wherein a white woman falls in love with a black teenager and observes him having sex with another woman.

At the night’s end, the sisters left first, followed by the drummer, whilst Josephine loitered long enough to fold her set list into a paper airplane and launch it out into the appreciative crowd.

 

 

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