The Breeders

One mother shares the ache and triumph with alt-rock royalty

The Breeders enchanted me when I first heard them 15 years ago. Freshly out of rehab, I was rebuilding my life in a 24-plex apartment building called The Norseman with a roommate, three cats, and a ferret named Pants. I needed music to teleport me from depression and the heaviness of losing a friend to suicide. I needed women-fronted bands for inspiration.

Even through tinny speakers on my clunky laptop, lead singer Kim Deal’s voice sounded medicinal, a honeyed elixir. The band’s music was both atmospheric and strange, while also melodic, charming, and joyful. It sounds liked it felt to stand in a craggy patch of sunlight, warm and sober after surviving a brutal, subzero Fargo winter in active addition. This was the band I had needed.

The Breeders playfully blend genres, blurring the lines between punk, rock, and pop like ’90s kids had started blurring gender lines. The band shimmers with their own brand of pop—vocalizations, harmonies, and catchy riffs that burrow their way into your subconscious in songs like, “Divine Hammer,” “Doe,” and “Saints.” The lead singer also played rhythm guitar, and her twin sister, Kelley Deal, played lead guitar and sang. Together, they brought a unique energy and shared love of classic country and folk that shines on their ballads “Do You Love Me Now,” “Fortunately Gone,” and a cover of an Ed’s Redeeming Qualities tune, “Drivin’ on 9.” The band also infuses surfer rock a la Dick Dale, with percussive, tremolo-picked guitars in the all-instrumental track, “Flipside” and bright slide guitar on “No Aloha.”

Simply put, The Breeders are fun! They’re a band who, unlike me, don’t take themselves too seriously. For years, I constantly looked for proof that the universe was smiting me—a parking ticket or a flat tire sent me reeling. I avoided my neighborhood grocery store for months after a clerk saw me crying in front of jars of Cheese Whiz because they evoked childhood nostalgia. Who on earth was moved to tears by cheese so processed it’s the color of a Muppet? Instead of letting me wallow in sadness and self-loathing like Elliot Smith, The Breeders sonically catapulted me to a bright future.

I was only a toddler when Pixies bassist Kim Deal and Throwing Muses frontwoman Tanya Donnelly started the band in 1989. It’s little wonder Kurt Cobain cited their debut album Pod, as one of his top 50 albums of all time. Though I love Pod too, their album Last Splash was my introduction.

“New Year,” the first track on Last Splash, begins with two pensively played, revered guitar notes and Deal’s warm voice like an incantation, “we have come for light.” The song then crescendos and speeds into a frenzied maelstrom of power chords, accompanied by a driving bass line. Kim croons, “I am the sun/I am the new year.” Clocking at just under two minutes, it’s one of my favorite opening tracks of all time. It sounds like an invitation to join the band on the verge of something unknown, but sublime.

I was back in therapy, and back in college again pursuing an English degree, and forming new friendships. My adopted city of Fargo, North Dakota was a hopeful place too, rebuilding itself after one of the most destructive floods in its very flooded history. I strolled along the muddy banks of the Red River humming another favorite Last Splash track, “Saints.” The chord progression was a variation on the classic hymn “When the Saints Go Marching In.” The octave-jumping lead guitar, smooth bassline, and punky swagger in Kim’s dragged out vocals buoyed me. I hummed along, believing the lyrics were “supper is ready when you are.” I later learned Kim was singing summer, not supper. To me, the song symbolized nourishment, which I was learning after years of self-abuse. I also found nourishment in wandering, relating to the song’s lyrics “walkin’ around/goin’ nowhere.” But nowhere is not a dead end. The murky water of the Red River whispered a vow: Keep going.

Of course any talk about The Breeders leads to their beloved single, “Cannonball.” which rose to number 2 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart in 1993. Rather than some forgettable hit, the song has sustained a lasting cultural impact. In 2023, a YouTube user commented: “Sometimes performers and songs are born for eternity…The Breeders' music is immortal. Every time I hear this song, I am happy again for 3 minutes and 46 seconds.” When the band opened for pop star Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts World Tour, Rodrigo told a sold-out Madison Square Garden crowd she remembers her life in two parts: before she heard “Cannonball” and after.

“Cannonball,” was one of the first songs I learned on bass guitar. I picked up the instrument because my therapist suggested I find a new way to fill my time after getting sober. As much as I loved brooding, it wasn’t conducive to recovery. In a gentle motherly tone, my therapist suggested building birdhouses or crocheting. But frankly, I was a brat who found birds annoying and lacked the fine motor skills that crocheting required.

I bought a cheap baby blue beginner bass and amp from a pawn shop. I fumbled for weeks, wishing I’d learned sooner and cursing myself for wasting six years of my life on the least rocking instrument on the planet, the godforsaken clarinet. The clarinet provided me with a musical foundation, but I knew I’d never be a bass virtuoso like Geddy Lee or Les Claypool. In rehab speak, I needed to KISS: Keep it Simple, Stupid.

A KISS mentality encoded The Breeders’ DNA. In a 2013 interview with Spin, Kim said, “If I had to choose between a simple melody and a really complicated rudiment sitting in the middle of a good song, I would prefer a simple melody every time.” Kim invited her twin sister Kelley to replace Donnelley when she left to form the band Belly. Kelley told Guitar World she learned to play guitar only a year before they recorded Last Splash. She had no desire to shred but wanted to play what best suited the songs and to create soundscapes.

Bassist Josephine Wiggs told Spin the opening riff of “Cannonball” resulted from accidentally playing the opening run in the wrong key, twice. “It’s hilariously deceptive,” Wiggs said, “because you think it’s gonna be one thing, and then all of a sudden it’s something else. We all thought it sounded cool. We left it like that.” It’s difficult to imagine “Cannonball” without Wiggs’ iconic mistake.

The band’s philosophy was a lesson for me, as I tended to overcomplicate and overthink nearly everything. I aspired for the cool and self-assured nature of The Breeders, to embrace my character flaws and mistakes as strengths. To experiment freely with abandon was a new motion for me, but it freed me to pursue writing and music. I don’t know what the lyrics of the song “Oh” on Pod mean, but I know the song wouldn’t be as moving without the break in Deal’s perfectly imperfect voice in the last verse. Similarly, the song “SOS” would feel flat without the crackling feedback created when Kelley plugged her sewing machine into a Marshall amp.

Eventually I graduated to a gleaming G&L bass with a maple neck, proudly hauling it on my cross country move to Portland, Oregon. I never became an expert, but I became proficient and loved playing. That was enough.

Shortly after moving, I had a mental breakdown. Shortly after that, I relapsed. I hocked my treasured bass at the pawn shop to buy a couple of 8 balls of heroin. My blurry days were measured by working, hustling for extra money to buy sticky lumps of black tar, and waking up glazed from a euphoric haze with sweat and a hollow ache in my bones alongside my boyfriend, J.

I never gave up though. I reached toward things I believed could save me or, at the very least, bring me fleeting non-chemical joy. On a rare day of stability and clarity, I scored tickets for The Breeders’ reunion tour. I was thrilled. Growing up as a millennial in North Dakota, I didn’t get the chance to see any of my favorite Gen X bands play in their heydays. Few of them came through. These tickets were a promise to myself to get better.

The night before the show, a drug dealer named Reset ripped us off, his neck tattooed with a power button symbol. He exclusively wore patchwork pants and listened to EDM. We were fools for trusting him, but desperation makes you do foolish things. J and I faced a decision: go to the show dope sick or sell the tickets to get well. We sold our tickets. It would’ve been the last show we saw together before I moved and he died from an accidental overdose.

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Years passed. The Breeders came with me through it all: as a singleton, as an MFA student, a survivor of a small brain hemorrhage, an MFA dropout, a wife, mother, and now public health worker. The Breeders gave me permission to stay true to myself, embrace the weird, and rebuild burned bridges.

Last winter, when I was nursing my newborn daughter in the middle of the night, I saw an ad for the band’s Denver tour date. Lucky me! I snapped up tickets bleary eyed and without needing to check my bank account, relieved I was no longer tooth- and nailing it through life as I had been the last time our paths crossed.

Until the day of the show, I debated whether it was practical for me to go out on a weeknight. Mothering had already left me sleep deprived. Why make it worse? But I decided sleep deprivation was worth it. I’ve regretted nights I chose my couch over seeing bands like Jawbreaker, The Dresden Dolls, and Unwound. I couldn’t do that again.

Instead of the old illicit substances, I slid orthopedic inserts into my Vans for this show and nestled ear plugs in my purse. As I tucked in my kids, they cried. My husband soothed them as mom guilt washed over me. He urged me to go, told me “You deserve it.”

As soon as The Deal sisters took the stage, I knew I’d made the right choice. They beamed. Their jubilation was infectious. The show they gave was a full-bodied experience, a portal whisking me away from the ticker tape of worries that constantly played in my adult mind. Immersed in the crowd of mostly Gen X and Millennials, the nostalgia of their music comforted me, though hearing it live somehow also made it feel new again. The Breeders dazzled with syrupy melodies, looping guitars, and violin swirling to atmospheric, polyphonic places. We cheered for “Cannonball.” We fell into an enraptured silence during quieter tracks like “Mad Lucas” and “Glorious.” Their energizing set spanned the entirety of Pod and Last Splash. The fact that Wiggs maintained the stoic mannerisms of revered bass players didn’t diminish the energy a bit.

Throughout instrument changes and tunings, the Deal sisters entertained us with banter. Kim told us about Kelley hauling her sewing machine from their Ohio home to a California recording studio, naively thinking she’d have downtime to sew their mother a quilt. Instead, it ended up on “SOS.” Kelley joked how she wasn’t affected by the altitude like most people, so she “felt like an alligator.” She wore her band’s own Last Splash t-shirt, not needing to posture or impress.

The show felt especially poignant for me, as the Deal sisters had also overcome addiction. “I was my own worst enemy,” Kim confessed to Crack Magazine. Kelley was busted for heroin possession at the height of their success, which was a factor leading to the band’s hiatus. The sisters worked on their own healing and recovery until 2013, when they reunited the band’s original lineup.

Their sober joy and ease together on stage was palpable, but also hard earned. The old wounds hummed beneath the surface. In their tobacco-tinged harmonies lived the ache of two sisters who know what it’s like to fall apart and come back together again. I know this ache and this triumph. For once, I felt grounded, absorbing the beauty of this transcendent, full circle moment. The set told the story of their healing and mending, which was also my story, minus the rock royalty status. To quote their Pod opening track, “It’s glorious.”