POD

This blog deserves a more substantial update but for now I wanna share an album review I enjoyed. "Pod" by The Breeders, ranked 81 on Pitchfork's Top 100 Albums of the 1990s.



Pod is a blissful mindfuck of a record. Deal may have played coy and seductive throughout, but there was something subtly sinister to her cooing-- like a siren or a schoolgirl concealing a butcher knife, her methods of enticement immediately struck as inherently destructive. This dynamic was fully realized in the songs themselves, which came across like the product of a band caught in a constant cycle of self-destruction and rebirth. Sure, the songs were catchy-- frighteningly so, in fact-- but that just served to make them all the more poignant when they fall apart. Deal's tobacco-stained delivery and Steve Albini's sharp, make-up-free production make songs like "Oh", "Doe", and the unforgettable "Iris" are as oddly wrenching as they are outwardly pretty and well-constructed.

More than a decade later, this record remains deliciously inscrutable. Sometimes it's disarmingly gorgeous. Other times it's punishingly gritty and violent. Usually, it's both. Pod 's bipolar cover of "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" perfectly encapsulates the record as a whole-- whether Deal was playing it cool or tearing shit up, she seemed to be enjoying every second of it. --Matt LeMay