Excuses, excuses. Kim Deal's got a million of 'em. How else could she manage to put off releasing her first original music in six years, not to mention following up on Last Splash, the radio and retail-friendly juggernaut from nine years ago?
"I haven't found the right drum sound," she'd say to engineer after engineer. "I'm going to take some time off and learn how to play the drums myself" (she's been working that one since 1995, when Tammy and the Amps-- Deal's basement solo project-- eventually became The Amps, with ex-Breeders drummer Jim Macpherson). "I can't do this without Kelley," she'd tell interviewers, despite having toured as the Breeders in 1997 with a Kelley-less lineup that included Macpherson, the Amps' Nate Farley, and violinist/vocalist Carrie Bradley. As engineers, studios and musicians were discarded as casually as cigarettes, and potential release dates came and went, the vultures-- and VH-1's Behind the Music-- started circling. Legend even has it that Kim Deal, having spent the Breeders' royalties and advance money long ago, has been living on fees generated by the Prodigy's "Firestarter," a song that, fortunately for Deal, sampled Last Splash's "S.O.S."
After years of being just around the corner like that Hopi Indian freak in Mulholland Drive, at last Title TK is upon us. And it's not bad. Far from being the chilly product of Deal's reputed perfectionism and production overkill, Title TK is a loose, spontaneous, even messy affair, and a blast to listen to once Deal's pop curiousities begin to take shape in the listener's imagination. Steve Albini should get a stipend from Nike for finally corralling Deal in his Chicago studio, convincing her to can the excuses and just do it.
"Round up, holler girl," are the first words from Kim Deal's mouth in six years, on opener "Little Fury," a rough-edged call-and-response with divebombing guitars, driving bass, and sister Kelley's dissonant harmonies. "Hold what you've got," Deal rasps on the chorus as hired guns Richard Presley and Mondo Lopez (of Los Angeles punk band Fear) and drummer Jose Medeles pound out a labored groove. Forget Last Splash and The Amps-- Title TK picks up where Pod left off in 1989, with a jagged sound nowhere near as tight as the Pixies' but a heartfelt enthusiasm for creating music. "Yeah, I'm leaking pure white noise," Deal sings on "London Song." It's not the most accurate statement, as this ain't exactly Merzbow, but it's an accurate reflection of what the Breeders are shooting for with Title TK: something uncomplicated, as pure and unaffected as static.
While the Thom Yorke school of songwriters, bored with conventional pop structures, slice their music apart and reconstruct it digitally like a Burroughs novel, Deal's latest compositions are disjointed by design-- trying on and chucking lyrical ideas and musical motifs with abandon, almost elevating ADD to a kind of art form. "Dumb as a fuckin'... and missing from the party," Deal sings in "Little Fury." Dumb as a fuckin' what? Attempting to decode Title TK's musical Mad Libs can be maddening-- it's easier to let Deal slur her words and catch the occasional fragments of brilliance that only weed-fueled midnight recording sessions and happy accidents can produce.
Title TK also finds Deal dabbling with new sounds, with hit-and-miss results. "The She" is built around a Stereolab-ish keyboard vamp, and while you shouldn't expect grooves as tight as Le Tigre's, the Breeders' rough-and-tumble brand of funk is convincingly nasty. But the silly slap-back percussion of "Sinister Foxx" and Record Engineering 101 channel-swapping guitars on "Huffer" aren't exactly cutting edge. Still, when the Breeders set out to rock-- and the chugging guitars and stomping drums of standout "Son of Three" will bring a knowing smile to Pixies afficianados-- they get the job done.
Title TK also contains two unexpectedly beautiful songs-- the disarmingly spare "Off You," with its lonesome guitar and gorgeous bass solo, is some of the creepiest headphone listening since The Wall. "I've never seen a starlet, or a riot, or the violence of you," Deal sings in a weary, muted voice. "I am the autumn in the scarlet, I am the makeup on your eyes." "Forced to Drive," a woozy travelogue bouyed by shimmering arpeggios and effects-pedal-to-the-metal choruses, merges Last Splash's summery hangover with the Velvets' "Ride into the Sun."
"Title TK" is journalistic shorthand for "title to come," and Title TK does feel incomplete in many ways-- from the hand-scribbled song titles on the back sleeve to the sometimes tuneless (and always somewhat haphazard) delivery of the vocals. Keyboards buzz from out of nowhere, guitars hit bum notes intentionally, basslines amble up and down the scale, sometimes two at a time. When Title TK loses people-- and I suspect it'll lose many-- it'll be with the langorous, abstract half-songs like "Put on a Side" (a listless anti-song built around a fretless bass groove, spare guitar and a single piano note) or "Sinister Foxx" (largely a meditation on the repeated phrase "Has anyone seen the iguana?").
And for an album so highly anticipated for so long, Title TK feels awfully skimpy, at just over 38 minutes, and pretty shamelessly padded. Did we really need the two false endings and an extended jam that stretches "London" past the three-minute mark? Or the rockabilly remake of The Amps' "Full on Idle," which barely deviates from the original? Isn't the two-minute "T and T" essentially just an extended instrumental intro to the short, sharp "Huffer"? Deal has been flogging many of these songs since that 1997 Breeders outing, including "Forced to Drive" (released on a fanclub single way back when), "Too Alive," and "Huffer." And what about Kelley's "Fire the Maid," a live favorite discarded from Title TK at the eleventh hour?
Still, it's a hell of a lot of fun to hear these fortysomething twins still singing about whippets and the quality of Jersey weed, and when the Breeders are on, they're still on. Just don't come to Title TK expecting the note-perfect pop confections of "Cannonball" or "Divine Hammer," because it's not that kind of record. And let's hope nobody samples Title TK on their big hit single, or it might be another ten years before the next one.
