The Breeders-Last Splash (1993)
Artist: The Breeders
Title: Last Splash
Label: 4AD/Elektra
Format: CD
Cat #: 9 61508-2
Year of Release: 1993
Country and Year of Edition Issue: US 1993 BMG Music Club Edition
Listed Condition: VG+/VG+
Sell Date: 3/9/25
Sell Price: $3.38
Discogs Last Sold: 3/8/25 VG+/VG+ $2.88
Low: $0.97
Median: $3.00
Average: $2.97
High: $5.99
Current low price: $2.00
Current Number on Sale at Discogs: 19
Have/Want: 735/124
Where Sold: Columbia, SC
Time it took to sell: 14 years
Where and When Bought: record club
Gwiz-gau Letter Grade: A-
Sad To See It Go: No
One of the things I noticed about Last Splash on this recent listen was how much NOISE was thrown into the mix. This clearly was near ground zero to Nirvana's commercial peak. This album was The Breeders biggest peaking at #33 on Billboard and spawning an alt rock standard "Cannonball" that peaked on the Billboard Hot 100 at #44. "Cannonball" had legs having been certified digital streaming Gold last year, 30 years after the album was certified Platinum in the US. I actually saw the Breeders open on Nirvana's In Utero tour in a big concrete 8,000 capacity hall call the Manhattan Center. You'd think Nirvana would've been able to do MSG but that was not the case.
So anyway, I have this memory of Kim Deal enunciating "Cannonball" and thinking it sounded weird with a real live voice, not the ultra-compressed one you hear on the hit record. I have the 20 year triple deluxe version on my hard drive but some of the tracks were mislabeled so the live tracks were slotted where the commercial ones were. My favorite track on the record was another single "Divine Hammer" but that didn't have as much processing and didn't sound radically different live until the applause kicked in. Gotta run them thru a scan thru MusicBrainz Piccard and fix that!
When the Breeders first came out with Pod it was in between the time Kim was still in the Pixies. My roommate Jimmy bought Pod on vinyl when it came out and played it relentlessly. I had already seen the Pixies live first in Providence opening for Gordon Gano's Mercy Seat back in 1987 and at Citi in Boston in the early 90's around the time Trump Le Monde. I haven't seen Kim Deal on stage since she first rejoined the Pixies in 2004 for a run in NYC at Hammerstein Ballroom (I got the Mission of Burma opener night). I haven't seen the Pixies since either for that matter through all the Kim Deal replacements.
Last Splash not only has been remastered in expanded triple CD fashion for the 2013 20th Anniversary but also in 2023 for the 30th Anniversary back to a shortened form with only a couple bonus tracks. This one that sold is the original I got in a record club a year or two after it came out. The type of thing I'd buy from a record club, something I liked, felt the need to own but wasn't of first tier importance for listening or owning. It sat on the shelf in nearly flawless condition. I did know some tracks on this very well probably from doing radio at WFDU around this time. The tracks I gravitated toward were "I Just Want To Get Along" and the aforementioned "Divine Hammer."
Josephine Wiggs was a big part of this band coming from a great British band I liked in my 80's radio years called The Perfect Disaster. Tanya Donelly from Throwing Music was replaced by Kim's sister on Last Splash. Kelly Deal is still with Kim on the solo tour now, but with this change, Kim was the clear talent and leader of this band. Jim MacPherson was an anonymous drummer that played on many Guided By Voices records after this. There was alot of hubub about Kim Deal's solo album, but I missed her show here last week at Bowery Ballroom presumably still in support of it. I heard some of her newer tracks a couple months back listening to some "end-of-the-year" albums on random shuffle and thought she sounded a little haggard now.
Listening to Last Splash a few times made me appreciate her a little more. I was going to give this a B+ but after listening to it, I appreciated everything about it and gave it an upgrade. Even what I thought was filler seems purposeful to some degree. What seemed insignificant seems less so. That the Breeders started as a side project and evolved briefly into a band bigger than the main one was a sign of the times.
Maybe now is indeed a time for reexamination of Kim Deal: discography and present.
FOR FURTHER REVIEW:
Various Artists-Sounds Blasts! EP3 (1989)
Various Artists-The Bob No. 38 Flexi (1990)
Various Artists-No Alternative (1993)
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