Daniel's Staff Pick: January 19, 2023

The Breeders: Title TK LP (2001, 4AD Records)

A problem one runs into when your record collection gets to be a certain size is making sure you give adequate attention to everything. I have enough records that I can’t store them all on easy-to-browse, eye-level shelving. The letters T through W of my LPs are behind a chair in my living room. If I know I want to listen to Total Control or Wire, it’s easy enough to reach behind the chair and grab one of their records, but it’s difficult to flip through those records and see what’s there. Consequently, Tarnfarbe or Univers Zero don’t get played as much because they’re just not as accessible and those artists’ names aren’t often at the front of my mind.

I’ve always been aware of this problem, and for years I refused to alphabetize my records, reasoning that if I kept my records in that order I would only play records that start with certain letters that were more accessible on my shelves. Eventually, though, that chaotic organizational system outlived its usefulness… I just couldn’t remember what I had or didn’t have, and I’d often want to listen to something and couldn’t find it. My latest solution is that I alphabetize my records, but I get help from technology when it’s time to decide what to listen to. While records are great at providing an immersive listening experience for the album you’ve chosen, digital libraries are more convenient to browse. So, I’ve been trying to get digital copies of everything I own in a physical format. As this process comes together, I’ve browsing my digital library to help me select what record I want to listen to.

I love this app called Albums, where the default view of your digital library is a grid of album artwork in random order. It only takes a few seconds of scrolling to find something I want to listen to, and then I go over to my shelves and pick out the record and play it. This method has prompted me to play records I hadn’t played in years. That’s what happened the other day with Title TK. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to listen to that evening, and when I scrolled past the album’s cover, I thought, “that’s exactly what I want to listen to.” It may have been ten years since I last listened to Title TK—who knows—but I’ve been having a lot of fun with it since I pulled it out.

Title TK is kind of a weird, under-appreciated album in the Breeders’ discography. It’s their third album, but it came out eight years after their breakout second album Last Splash. Those eight years were chaotic, with many line-up changes and expensive aborted recording sessions. Apparently, Kim Deal was a brutal taskmaster in the studio, alienating many of the musicians who contributed to the sessions. At one point, unsatisfied with the drum performances she was getting from every musician she tried, Deal decided to learn drums herself, moving back to her native Ohio to woodshed. (Deal, indeed, provides some of the drum tracks on Title TK.) After years of false starts, a new version of the Breeders coalesced in 2000 with three members of Fear (!?!?!?!) joining the fray, as well as Kim’s twin sister Kelley returning to the band after a hiatus.

If you get two Breeders fans together, they’re probably going to argue about whether the first album, Pod, or the second album, Last Splash, is the group’s high-water mark, but I think Title TK is their catalog’s quiet masterpiece. Maybe it just hit me at the right time, but there are so many things I love about this record that are unique to it. The biggest ones are the senses of space and rhythm that characterize these songs. I always thought I heard a distinct dub reggae influence on Title TK, not only in the heavy bass on tracks like “The She,” but also in the mix’s sense of wide-open space. So much of my listening diet around the time Title TK came out was punk and hardcore, and I found it refreshing to hear a record that sounded so light and airy. Plus, all that space in the mix provides the perfect setup for blindsiding the listener with a weird sound coming out of nowhere, like the synth burst that interrupts the otherwise gentle “Off You.” Also, while the album is as full of great guitar and vocal parts like you would expect, many of the songs get their mojo from unexpected rhythms. The first track, “Little Fury,” is a perfect example, where a minimal yet distinctive drumbeat provides the song’s most important hooks.

Those are the parts of Title TK that are unique, but it also has all the things I love about the Breeders’ other records. There’s Kim and Kelley’s harmony singing… there’s almost always something special about siblings singing in harmony, and the sound of Kim and Kelley singing together is just pleasing to my ears, syrupy but with a haunting quality. And then there are Kim’s lyrics. They’re imagistic, full of apparent non sequiturs, but always alive with potential meaning. They’re like Stephen Malkmus’s lyrics, but without the self-conscious erudition (some might say pretension). As with the lyrics, Kim’s songwriting seems to follow an idiosyncratic internal logic, never doing what you expect but always sounding natural and intuitive. I just love the way Kim’s brain works.

So yeah… Title TK… an under-appreciated gem. Check it out, or if it doesn’t sound like something that would appeal to you, give some love to one of the lesser-accessed corners of your collection.

Oh, and if you’re familiar with this album and you’re wondering why I’m holding it up backwards, it’s because I like the back cover better than the front, so that’s how I have it shelved. There are quite a few records I have shelved that way. This one has been that way so long I almost forgot what I know as the front cover isn’t actually the real album cover.


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