The Breeders Last Splash

Patience has become a prerequisite quality in Breeders fans. Since the Deal twins’ 1993-classic ‘Last Splash’, their shortest break between albums has been six years, and this fifth instalment now arrives a decade on from its predecessor ‘Mountain Battles’. In terms of prolificacy, The Fall they’re not, even if the Dayton, Ohio, outfit could once have rivalled Mark E. Smith’s project for internal dramas and revolving line-ups.

At its best, Samira Winter’s Ethereality recalls the songwriting of Weezer’s blue album and the feeling of Last Splash-era Breeders and Malkmus’s pop distortions. On the song “Blue Eyes, ” she even explores some of the terrain mapped by Beach House. Utilizing soaring, anthemic dynamics and universally relatable topics of young adult insecurities and struggle, she’s pushing the limits of her guitar playing and stretching the conventional confines of what a pop song is supposed to be. It’s easy to describe this as “dreamy” or “sun-drenched” pop … but there’s something more elusive happening. While this album might seem easy to interpret at first, repeated visits reveal a melancholy undercurrent masked by bright arrangements. Really, Ethereality is based on an artful examination of post-millennial emotional confusion.