Kids, it’s time we had a talk about The Breeders. Specifically, we need to have a chat about their 2002 album Title TK, also known as “one of the best fucking records ever made”, but that title mostly just gets bandied about in my living room. It barely sold and there was nary a kind word written or spoken about it outside of Kim Deal fanatics upon its release. To understand exactly why the album was the subject of such derision, we need to look into the events that occured between 1993’s Last Splash and the unfairly maligned album in question.

Back in 1994, The Breeders were seriously on the verge of taking over the world. Few might remember it nowadays, but the band had graduated to headlining small arenas by this point due to the success of a few mega-hit singles. Let me refresh your memory with the video clip for “Cannonball”.

Now, as you might remember, this song was on MTV every five minutes during the two-year span when MTV was actually concerned with breaking new bands that were worth a damn. Thanks to that exposure, kids in my high school went absolutely bananas over the band (and strangely, they had the same reaction over Belly), and that was no mean feat… it was a school in a small town in central Florida. (There was a student that actually rode a tractor to school once. I’m totally not kidding, but that is a different story altogether.) These kids weren’t just into “Cannonball” either. No, like you actually heard kids pumping album tracks like “Hag” and “No Aloha” out of their pickup trucks in the parking lot. If it was happening at this school, it’s safe to say that The Breeders were huge everywhere.

Kim Deal enoyed the fruits of success, like appearing on the cover of Spin magazine, while her twin sister Kelley enjoyed a crippling drug habit. After Kelley’s 1995 drug bust landed her in rehab, Kim placed The Breeders on an unspoken hiatus and concentrated on a new band known as The Amps. Said band was basically The Breeders Part Two, especially considering that Kim saw fit to retain Breeders drummer Jim MacPherson… and that their solitary album Pacer sounded exactly like the underproduced - yet absoultely phenomenal - follow-up to Last Splash. Few people bought the album, The Amps disbanded and Kim sorta slunked off into obscurity.

Fast forward to 2002. It’d been years since much official news had come out of the Breeders camp, besides a few short shows with various lineups. The remaining fanbase has dwindled to a teensy fraction of what it once was, and even those fans had pretty much given up hope of ever hearing a new album under the Breeders brand name. Even yours truly was shocked when Title TK popped on to the record store shelves in May 2002, and while it took a few listens to really sink in, I was convinced that the album had what it took to propel the group back to the dizzying heights of their nineties fame. Boy, was I ever wrong. Here’s what screwed that comeback up:

1. The lineup now consisted of Kim, Kelley and… some guys that we didn’t know anything about. While they were a damn fine group in this incarnation, people don’t like lineup changes, and Breeders fans were simply crazy about former bassist Josephine Wiggs.

2. Like it or not, MTV had everything to do with breaking The Breeders to the mainstream. At this point the channel had switched to a diet of all hip-hop, pop divas and reality shows. They weren’t about to show the promotional video for “Huffer”, (which depicted an unwashed, seemingly uninterested rock band in an empty bar), next to Jessica Simpson and Jackass, no matter how great the song was.

3. Man, oh man, did the label ever drop the ball promotion-wise. If I hadn’t been working in a record store at the time, I’d have never known the album came out.

4. Too much confusion over what single to use resulted in no airplay at all. “Off You” was released as the lead single in March, and really, the song is awesome, but it’s too quiet and monotonous to result in anyone noticing it. What the hell was the label thinking? Before the song even had a chance to fail, “Huffer” was issued as a follow-up literally four freakin’ weeks later. Ok, I’m no industry mogul, but that doesn’t make any fuckin’ sense at all.

5. When people actually did find out about Title TK and went out to buy the album, they were greeted with a dark, sloppy, low-fi recording that on initial review sounded slapdash and incoherent. A good number of people immediately dismissed it as a throwaway and never played it again.

Title TK was doomed from the start, but it’s such an insidiously great album that takes more than just a few listens to fully ‘get’ that I can’t believe it hasn’t somehow risen to In The Aeroplane Over The Sea types of mythology and scrutiny. Pitchfork said the lyric sheet reads like one giant mad lib, and for once, they were right on the money. But that’s part of the beauty, the lyrics obviously meant something, but in their ambiguity, they could also mean anything, making them the most universal lyrics Kim Deal had ever penned. If nothing else, they were at least the most interesting. Check out a few of these couplets:

“Sorrow blowin through the veins / I’m over Houston / You’re over the night we met” - “The She”

“Look close! Hate! Tide all white / Row! On the glass surf / He pulled the paddle / It’s okay with me / What I’d like to do with your violin / And it’s bow” - “Full On Idle”

“Buzzing flourescence / I don’t know what it wants from me / If I find the door / Then I am the son of go” - “Son Of Three”

Seriously, you could go over the lyric sheet to Title TK for a week without even listening to the record and still have no earthly ideas concerning what Kim Deal is trying to communicate. Beyond references to cars and drugs you didn’t have much to go on. However, spinning the record reveals a very scratchy-throated Kim that sounds, erm, as if she’d taken her medication a bit earlier in the day. To be blunt, you can almost smell her beer breath as she slurs her way through the wonderfully understated “Sinister Foxx”, and the mumbling apparent in the first verse of “Too Alive” probably wasn’t an accident either.

Do any of those flaws detract from the overall listening experience with Title TK? Not on my watch. It only adds to the overall feeling in the record grooves, not to mention the mysterious atmosphere that somehow gets conjured up every time I drop the needle on the drum heavy, harmonic masterpiece “Little Fury”. Here, enjoy a live clip to see what I mean.

The spooky vibe doesn’t end there. Try the following clips on for size.

“The She” (live)

“Off You” (live)

Now, that druggy atmosphere isn’t all that the album has to offer. You also get some classic blasts of the Breeders pop of yore, but their placement in the running order certainly adds to the endearingly disjointed nature of the album. After checking out these clips of the other singles from Title TK, I dare you to not rush right over to Amazon and order a copy immediately.

“Huffer” (live)

“Son Of Three” (single version)

Okay, in the musical climate of 2002, what with bands like The Strokes, The Hives and White Stripes being all the rage… how in the hell was “Son Of Three” NOT the biggest single of the year? I guess I have questionable taste and all, but seriously people, how much fucking better does a song have to be?

Title TK sold approximately 73 copies, give or take. Due to the abominably low sales figures, Warner Music saw fit to drop The Breeders from their roster, and while rumors of an upcoming album have abounded, you kinda can’t really believe it until you see it with the Deal sisters. It’s okay though. I’m still playing Title TK like it’s a new release, and I’m not even close to tired of it. When The Breeders consistently put out material of that quality… fuck. Take all the time you want between records, as far as I’m concerned.

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