Last Splash Elizabethtown KY

Last Splash

The Breeders

Elektra Records, 1993

REVIEW BY: Sean McCarthy

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 03/07/1999

What is it with the the offspring of great college/alternativebands in the '90s? Two bands, Sugar and The Breeders, came outafter their legendary '80s formations, Husker Du and the Pixiesrespetively, broke up. Both release two fully realized albums andthen both flame out.

It could be that these two artists, Bob Mould and Kim Deal, werenever known for being complacent. But it's unfortunate that whatbroke the Breeders apart may have been more to do with drugproblems within the band than something like their creative musicalwells just upped and died.

Last Splash, their last full album, could not have come outat a better time. As Kurt Cobain was singing praises to the Pixiesand more and more people were getting turned on to college oralternative music, Last Splash made its debut. It featured a member of thePixies...and a killer first single, "Cannonball," which led thealbum to top the college charts for months.

New listeners may have been put off by the rough edges of therest of the album. Piss on them. Last Splash packed enough abrasive hooks to satisfy punkpurists but it also had elements of tunefullness, such as "DivineHammer." But these songs actually had structure. Other songs, suchas "New Year," "Mad Lucas" and "Do You Love Me" were not rooted inyour traditional 'verse-chorus-verse' style.