This week, Janice Headley dives into Pod by The Breeders. Their debut album really lets Kim Deal shine outside of her role in The Pixies.
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This week, Janice Headley dives into Pod by The Breeders. Their debut album really lets Kim Deal shine outside of her role in the Pixies. The Breeders influenced generations of artists, including Kurt Cobain, who invited the band to open for Nirvana twice during their touring career.
Hosts: Dusty Henry & Martin Douglas
Written + Produced: Janice Headley
Mixed + Mastered: Roddy Nikpour
Podcast Manager: Isabel Khalili
Editorial Director: Larry Mizell Jr.
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In 1989, musicians Kim Deal and Tanya Donnelly were feeling a little aimless. The pair had met when their bands – the Pixies and Throwing Muses, respectively – had teamed up for a European tour. In the 2005 book Fool the World: The Oral History of a Band Called Pixies, Tanya affectionately said of Kim, “I never had girlfriends like her in high school. She was my first ‘I’m gonna braid your hair!’ kind of friend.”
The Muses were on hiatus – frontwoman Kristin Hersh was pregnant at the time.
And the Pixies were also taking time off – the European tour had proved taxing for a band already at a breaking point. Kim had been wanting to contribute more creatively, and was getting shot down by frontman Black Francis. He had even thrown a guitar at Kim while on stage in Germany, and the two had – understandably – stopped talking.
One night, as Tanya and Kim were leaving a Sugarcubes concert together, they joked about getting rich off a “club hit,” but thankfully, neither one of them really had it in them. As Tanya told the L.A. Times in 1990, "We started it and figured out we couldn’t do it for beans… We had no idea what to do."
Instead, they did what they do best – and the result is the subject of today’s Cobain 50 episode… the iconic debut album from The Breeders, 1990’s Pod.
Although Kim and Tanya’s respective bands were both signed to 4AD Records overseas, here in the states, The Pixies had a deal with Elektra, while Throwing Muses was represented by Sire. As a result, contractually, they couldn’t both be principal songwriters for The Breeders. So, they decided this first album would feature Kim’s songs, and the second would feature Tanya’s. Or at least, that was the plan.
They recorded a demo tape with Carrie Bradley, violinist and vocalist in Boston band Ed's Redeeming Qualities. Their mutual friend and Carrie’s manager Ray Halliday played bass and co-wrote a couple of songs, while an array of drummers stepped in to help.
Early tracks included “Only in 3s”...
...“Doe”...
...“Lime House”...
...the song “Silver”...
which Kim originally co-wrote for the 1989 Pixies album Doolittle.
Sadly, critics at the time often dismissed the track, citing it as slow and eerie – so you could understand why Kim might’ve wanted to reclaim it with the Breeders…
A song titled “You Always Hang Around”...
...which was later re-worked into “Divine Hammer” for the Breeders following album Last Splash…
And another one saved for Last Splash, a cover of the Ed’s Redeeming Qualities‘ song “Drivin’ on 9.”
Here’s the original Ed’s Redeeming Qualities version, just to compare…
Originally, the songs had a more country-western tinged feel to them, recalling Kim’s early days making music with her twin sister Kelley… As teens, they would perform Hank Williams covers at truck stops and biker bars around their hometown of Dayton, Ohio. Always ambitious, Kim had started writing her own songs at age 13, including the track “Do You Love Me Now” which eventually made it onto Last Splash.
Kim proudly told The Guardian in 2008, that "these two trucker-looking guys would always come into the hotel bar where we played and request that song, because they liked it so much."
They sent the demo tape to Ivo Watts-Russell, co-founder of 4AD Records, who declared it "absolutely magical, beautiful stuff." As he later told Spin magazine in 2013, "If you’ve met Kim, you understand why a record where she got more of a focus than she did in the Pixies would be fun to do. She’s an eccentric woman, very individual. I wouldn’t say that anything she decided to do would have been okay, but pretty much anything she decided to do would have been okay."
4AD gave them $11,000 to record the album. They invited English musician Josephine Wiggs to join the group on bass – her band Perfect Disaster had opened for them on the Throwing Muses/Pixies European tour. Kim asked Steve Albini to engineer the recordings – she had worked with Steve on the Pixies 1988 album Surfer Rosa and he was a huge fan of hers. Here’s Steve on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast in 2015:
"I have a very close relationship with Kim Deal. I think she's got an absolutely magical voice. I think she is a genius, and she thinks about music in a unique way. I consider myself very close to her in terms of her musical existence. Like, I really admire her. And I'm, you know, I'm proud of that association. The Pixies, as a band.... you know, they were fine. Whatever. They were fine."
Kim wanted to recruit Kelley to play drums – she liked the idea of an all-girl band she described as “[like] the Bangles from Hell"... And Kelley had originally auditioned to play drums in the Pixies. Black Francis was even into the idea, but Kelley’s own lack of confidence in her abilities sent her back to Ohio and a desk job as a defense contractor at an Air Force base, which is where she stayed even after being invited to join the Breeders.
Albini recommended Britt Walford, but he was worried about overshadowing his main band, Slint. He agreed to play under a pseudonym.
Back when they played their first show together at The Rathskeller in Boston, they were billed as “Boston Girl Super-Group.” Once Britt was on board, Kim brought back the name The Breeders – a band name she had kicked around as a teen, meant as a derogatory term for straight people. As for the album title, Kim told Melody Maker that the word “pod” was meant to evoke a uterus, with Josephine adding that it relates to the theme of fertility and to the band name itself…
Pod is an album you can judge by its cover. Speaking of fertility, the cover art features revered 4AD Records graphic designer Vaughan Oliver, wearing a belt of dead eels, an obvious phallic symbol. As he performed a fertilty dance, photographer Kevin Westenberg snapped away, using a long exposure to achieve the blurring effect you see in the finished product. In the 2013 book Facing the Other Way: The Story of 4AD, Vaughan says the artwork concept was an attempt to flirt with Kim.
The songs on Pod are also sexual. Not a huge surprise as Kim had established her songwriter prowess with the Pixies “Gigantic,” a song said to be a well-endowed partner.
Like her Pixies bandmate Black Francis, and later Kurt Cobain, lyrics touch on subjects of isolation, introspection, and intoxication…
Kim broke down a lot of the album in a 1990 interview with Melody Maker magazine… For example, she explained the song “Hellbound” is about a fetus that survives an abortion…. Adding that the song is "kinda like a heavy metal hymnal. We're all hellbound."
"Only in 3s" – the only song on Pod co-written by Kim and Tanya – is about a ménage à trois…
“Iris” ties in the album title, with its lyrics about "a pea pod flowering and then getting ripe and stinky."
Ivo was the one who suggested they cover The Beatles track "Happiness Is a Warm Gun,” which Kim was resistant to at first… until she realized the double-entendre of the “gun” fit the theme of the album.
There’s also a surprising sweetness to the album. The song “Oh!” is tender and delicate, featuring a mournful violin part by Carrie. Despite having heard the song repeatedly over 30 years, in researching this podcast, I just learned that the song is written from the perspective of an insect, calling out to the others to help them not get stepped on, and it honestly chokes me up when Kim sings out to her fellow insects to “run to the log that's rotten…” for protection…
Pod hit the streets in May 1990, just a few months before the Pixies third studio album Bossanova. The tension that developed during the European tour continued to build. Here’s Black Francis on Canadian TV in 1990:
INTERVIEWER: At one point you said that you didn't want other people in the band to write, that you wouldn't allow them to evolve that way because it was your first band and you were the writer. You still feel that way?
BLACK FRANCIS: Yes, absolutely.
INTERVIEWER: Are you an egotist?
BLACK FRANCIS: And a control freak.
Over the decades, Kim has been very careful and gracious in interviews, saying the Breeders wasn’t formed as a reaction to being minimized in the Pixies. In a 2008 interview with The Guardian, she scoffs, “I was the 'Maiden in Distress,' and Charles was 'The Man Who Was Keeping Me Down,' not letting me sing. But I didn't want to sing in the Pixies; I'd written hundreds of songs before joining the group, I was interested in being the bassist now. As if I ever needed permission to sing my songs ..."
But listening to Pod, there’s almost a giddiness in Deal’s vocals – you can feel the elation of all these songs she had been stockpiling finally getting a chance to be released. The track “Fortunately Gone” was one she had written as a teen and would sing with Kelley at truck stops in Dayton, Ohio.
The Breeders were never part of the “riot grrrl” scene – Kim joking referred to themselves as “riot hags” – but Pod does feel like a feminist album. Black Francis ended the Pixies in 1993, reportedly by fax, although a Spin magazine oral history of the band does reflect different viewpoints on that.
And it felt triumphant when later that year, The Breeders’ released their sophomore full-length Last Splash to huge success, landing at number 33 on the Billboard 200 Albums chart, and the single “Cannonball” reaching No. 44 on the Billboard Hot 100. Bossanova reached number 70 on the Billboard 200, just to compare.
And then there’s the cultural impact… Because of Pod, PJ Harvey sought out Steve Albini to produce her second studio album, 1993’s Rid of Me. In a 2014 Spin magazine profile on Hole’s Live Through This, Courtney Love admitted she was "listening to the Breeders’ Pod 24/7." And, of course, Kurt Cobain declared it one of his favorite albums of all time.
In his Cobain 50 episode on the Pixies, my colleague Dusty Henry talked about how Nirvana – as we know them – wouldn’t exist without their music. The same could be said for The Breeders.
As Kurt himself told Melody Maker magazine in 1992, "I wish Kim was allowed to write more songs for the Pixies, because 'Gigantic' is the best Pixies song, and Kim wrote it." Kurt added, “The main reason I like them is for their songs, for the way they structure them, which is totally unique, very atmospheric…”
It’s often said that Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was inspired by the Pixies, with its infamous loud QUIET loud pattern… many say it was inspired specifically by “Gigantic.”
As you’ve surely surmised by now, the Breeders original plans for a sophomore album featuring Tanya’s songs never really materialized. Instead, Tanya took the material she had written for that second LP and started her own band, Belly.
At this point, Kim reached back out again to her sister. We’ll let Kim explain it, in this 1993 interview on MTV’s 120 Minutes:
KIM: Oh, well, I'll explain it. Me and Josephine were both on Pod. But then for the next release, Safari, Tanya was starting Belly, and we didn't think she could actually fly out. But at the last minute — because she can't stay away from us — she did. But at that time, we had already recruited Kelley to play some bits on Safari. And then Britt Walford, who's from Louisville, he played on Safari too and Pod. He used different names, so it seems like we'd have a lot of drummers, but it was mainly it was only Britt. But anyway, he's in Louisville now. This isn't a good explanation, is it?
MTV VJ: You're getting there. I'm kind of lost.
KIM: When Tanya was going to do Belly, I was like, okay, we could be a three piece. I thought we could be a three piece. Josephine could play bass, I could play rhythm, and Kelley could play drums because she played drums in high school. She said, Kim, I don't want to play drums. Well, what do you want to play? Lead guitar. Well, you can't play guitar. I don't care. I want to play lead guitar anyway. So then she was playing lead guitar. Me and Kelley, we live in Dayton. We went down to a local bar there, and Jim was playing with his band, and we asked him if you want to play with us. And he said, yes. So, we just stole him from his old band.
Tanya makes her final appearance as a member of the Breeders in the music video for “Safari,” alongside Kelley, who is wearing a business suit, because she literally had just come in from her desk job at the Air Force.
Kelley mentions spotting Kurt, watching during the recording of the Safari EP in 1992, in this interview for BBC Radio 6’s Deep Dive into Nevermind:
KELLEY: I first met Kurt Cobain sometime in the summer in 1991. The breeders were up in New York recording the Safari EP. There was a fella that just showed up, a couple people I think showed up and we kind of we're looking, who's that guy? A guy named Kurt. He's in a band and he was really shy and he barely spoke, and he just kind of hung out for a while. And then he split. It was a while before it was like us. That was that Kurt guy. He was there at the studio. That's first time I've met Kurt.
In his own way, Kurt helped change The Breeders’ life, by introducing them to new audiences. Here’s Kelley again on BBC Radio 6:
KELLEY: You know? Nevermind was a period of of joy for the band. It was it was really exciting. It was exciting for the breeders. It was exciting for them. It was just a really good vibe at that time. In my memory, that's when I remember.
In 2018, The Guardian asked Kim how it felt to know Kurt said The Breeders’ Pod changed his life.
She replied, "Something like that makes you realise that music is so impactful. Whether it’s me or somebody else, it changes people’s lives. Sometimes it all gets so cynical, or I’m just doing my own thing, and I forget that music really is powerful – it really does matter."
It really does.
