The Stool Pigeon music newspaper

“I wish Kim was allowed to write more songs for the Pixies.” So said Kurt Cobain two years before he decided to pump a bullet through his head. Indeed, Kurt wasn’t the only one who thought Kim Deal was the downtrodden girlie shackled to the bass and not “allowed” to write songs in Charles Thompson IV’s seminal band. We all thought it, so much so that when Kim broke ranks in 1988 to form her own band The Breeders (with Tanya Donelly of Throwing Muses and Belly fame), it was viewed as a vehicle for the former’s creative frustrations.

Alas, as much as I would love her to be, she certainly isn’t a feminist superheroine overcoming macho adversity, and with fourth album Mountain Battles just out, Kim and her twin sister Kelley (a fully fledged member since their 1991 ‘Safari’ EP and soon-to-be-published author of Bags that Rock: Knitting on the Road with Kelley Deal) are keen to put a few misconceptions concerning The Breeders’ history to bed.

The new album, incidentally, is an adventurous step up from 2002’s Title TK and shows an emotional range that takes in their entire back catalogue. The feistiness of Last Splash, for example, can be heard on the exquisitely teutonic ‘German Studies’, a song that proves they haven’t lost their knack for penning mosh-inducing tracks like 1993’s floor-stomper ‘Cannonball’. Meanwhile, the saccharine-tinged lament of ‘We’re Gonna Rise’ draws from Pod-era Breeders. The dub reggae-influenced ‘Bang On’, with its laconic lyric, “I love no one / And no one loves me,” and the amusing ‘Walk It Off’ (“Now the singer gets laid / And the drummer gets paid”) show that lyrically, as well as sonically, they’ve created another intriguing record.

Funnily enough, it’s in bed that I find Kim, in a hotel room in west London. She’s surprisingly accommodating considering how jet-lagged she is. Her tiredness only subsides when her sister Kelley hands her a coffee and some sachets of sugar. The relationship the pair share is a nurturing, loving one. Throughout our encounter they joke and laugh constantly, but it’s clear that Kelley mothers her younger sister (by a few minutes) by coaxing answers out of her and vetoing questions she thinks could compromise Kim.

It’s probably the way things have been since they were kids. Growing up in ‘Gem City’ (Dayton, Ohio), the Deals caught the music bug early. Aged just 13, Kim was writing her own songs and turning her parents’ basement into a home studio. With her sister in tow, the pair decided to take their songs to various bars and truck stops in the local area. Kim: “My mom and dad had their breakfast while we were singing at a truck stop once. That was nice.” At this time they weren’t called The Breeders, despite what’s posted on Wikipedia and ingrained into common musiclore.

The theory that Kim started The Breeders back in the eighties as a means to get away from Thompson is also redundant. In reality, The Breeders’ conception laid less in a hunger for emancipation and more in a desire to alleviate boredom.

“Kristin Hersh was pregnant and Throwing Muses were on a hiatus,” says Kim matter-of-factly while furiously stirring her coffee. “Charles, inexplicably, was on a solo tour across the country, so Tanya and I were both kicking around. We started doing stuff because we had scads of time on our hands.”

So the songwriting wasn’t a means to express something that was being repressed in the Pixies?

“I’d written hundreds of songs before I’d even moved to Boston and joined the Pixies,” says Kim. “The idea that somebody can stop someone else from writing or singing is just an impossible scenario.”

“I don’t think people understand that you’d just come from there - from all that shit that we were doing,” adds Kelley, reflecting on their time as a young duo.

“Oh my god! I loved not having to write the fucking songs,” quips Kim.

“You were playing in a whole band!”

“Exactly! We were doing it. It was awesome! When we plugged in our instruments together at the same time it was so exciting…”

“I find it kinda insulting that people think that way,” says Kelley looking at her sister, “because it gives you the feeling of being the victim.”

“Yeah, I know. I used to think, ‘Well, is it because I’m a chick?’ But actually I think that people just wanted me to be saved because they enjoyed listening to me.”

“I was gonna say, maybe they really enjoyed ‘Gigantic’ [Pixies’ 1988 hit that Kim co-wrote]…”

“Exactly!” cries Kim, almost jumping up from the bed.

“…and they thought, ‘She should do some more of those. Why isn’t she? Oh Charles must not let her.’”

“Maybe that’s why they thought I needed to be saved, because they enjoyed my singing and not so much because I’m the chick, the victim.”

If indeed Kim was the “victim” of Thompson’s patriarchy in the Pixies, it seems unlikely she would have taken part in the band’s recent reunion tours. The fact of the matter is Kim only agreed to the reformation because guitarist Joey Santiago told her the money from the live dates would make the difference between his kids going to an alright school and a really good one. Certainly a commendable gesture on Kim’s part if ever there was one.

“Thank you,” says Kim. “Joe is highly embarrassed that I say it. I’m supposed to put a spin on it.”

Do you think he emotionally blackmailed you into doing the Pixies tour?

“He did!”

They laugh. Kim looks at Kelley.

“This isn’t going to help is it?”

“Nope,” says Kelley resolutely.

So now The Breeders are back in action is there really no chance of a Pixies record?

“There might be,” says Kim. “But I’m not going to be on it.”

Do you think that Thompson might be a bit bitter about that?

“Do you think maybe pass on all this because in my mind all this sounds horrible,” says Kelley, looking at her sister.

“Like, if you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say it?” says Kim.

“Yeah. Do you have anything good to say about this?”

“I don’t know… last time I saw him was in Australia a year ago. I think he’s doing fine. I think he’s really busy with his family. I have no idea. I really don’t. Do I sound believable?”

“Yeah,” adds Kelley, laughing. “You sound incredible.”

So now we’ve laid some Breeders rumours to rest, are there any that you want to start up?

“Actually,” says Kim, “if you wrote this the way we just described it, it would be a rumour. You’d never be able to prove this load of nonsense…”

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