The Breeders

The Breeders
Mountain Battles
(4AD)

***

“Among the Breeders’ charms,” stability has never been their strong suit, said Joan Anderman in The Boston Globe. Ever since the Pixies disbanded and Kim Deal started a new band with her twin, Kelley, the two have been in and out of rehab, and the rhythm section has been a revolving door that never seems to stop. “The music gets made when it gets made,” and each album—even each song—“bears no relation to what comes before or after.” Mountain Battles marks only the fourth album in 18 years for the Breeders. It’s not exactly a comeback, said Stuart Berman in Pitchforkmedia.com. The band already tried that with 2002’s Title TK—an underwhelming album follow-up to 1993’s Last Splash that took nine years too long. At last with Mountain Battles they’ve returned to form, even if their efforts remain a little haphazard. They sing in Spanish on “Regalame Esta Noche,” head south on cowboy lullaby “Here No More,” and tackle “oompa-loompa punk” on “German Studies.” In defiance of logic, the Breeders somehow pull it all off, said Sam Richards in Uncut. As inscrutable as the disparate elements sometimes sound, the sisters’ “sweetly menacing harmonies” make the album seem more inviting.

FROM THE MAGAZINE

Gossip

With her alleged stalker seated across the room, Uma Thurman read aloud a note from the obsessed fan in a New York City courtroom last week. The actress said she “was completely freaked out” by a card from Jack Jordan with a drawing of an open grave and the message, “My hands should be on your body at all times.” Jordan is accused of harassing Thurman through frequent attempts to contact her. His notes “reflected this relationship that I unfortunately imagined that we had,” he testified, and were “meant to amuse her, to her endear her to me.”

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