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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
For Last Splash, her second full-length Breeders album, Kim Deal jettisoned Tanya Donelly, brought in her sister Kelley as lead guitarist (despite the fact that she could barely play when she joined) and came up with a disc full of fun, toothsome rock, not least of which was the mammoth summer-of-1993 hit "Cannonball", a celebration of mosh-pit bounce and purred innuendo. Deal's voice is coy, but the band's full of dreamy energy, rocking like her old band the Pixies without their abrasion, tomboyish rather than macho. Not everything on Last Splash is fully fleshed-out as a song, but even the more fragmentary pieces--the embittered punk mutter of "I Just Wanna Get Along", the horny daydream "Divine Hammer"--speed the album's flow. --Douglas Wolk
Review
It’s a little known fact that The Breeders’ second album – a curate’s egg of twisted pop, weird art-rock textures and the kind of genius that makes sense to roughly 0.836% of the general populace – sold well enough to score a platinum disc in America (indeed, it now hangs in a corridor in Dave Grohl’s recording studio in LA). The Breeders had began as a side-project for Pixies bassist Kim Deal and Throwing Muses/Belly guitarist Tanya Donnelly; by the time Last Splash hit record shelves in 1993, however, Donnelly was long gone and the Pixies had folded, Deal taking charge of The Breeders and recasting them in the image she shared with twin sister Kelly.
Their debut, 1990’s Pod, was dark, magical, wonderful; its successor was all those things again, only with hooks. Lots of them. Scientific studies have proven that the album’s lead single, Cannonball, has enough hooks to rival many lesser bands’ Greatest Hits, and bloody wars have been started over just what the best part of the song is: the ghostly hums that open it, the loping bassline, the chugga-chugga guitar/drum breaks, the Deal sisters’ hypnotic harmonies on the chorus… It filled indie dancefloors upon release, and still does, and hooked unsuspecting alternateens into the Deals’ magical, subterranean world.
Last Splash would perplex many. Its pop moments were legion and wonderful, but scattered between spooky thrash-outs like New Year, drone-slaked drug-rock meanders like Mad Lucas and Roi, the gonzo surf-rock of Flipside, and squalling instrumental S.O.S. (later sampled by The Prodigy for Firestarter). Some were left baffled; others, though, were quickly seduced by Last Splash as a whole, its weird corners, its very uniqueness.
Last Splash was every bit the equal to the Pixies’ similarly idiosyncratic discography (to these ears, better). It confirmed Deal as a bewitchingly adept songwriter, effortlessly melodious and given to tempering her most sugary compositions with electrifying twists. Divine Hammer was perhaps the sweetest, most innocent ode to the appendages of well-endowed men ever committed to vinyl, while Do You Love Me Now?, which the Deals had been singing as a country ballad since their teens, captured a powerful longing with its mix of aching harmony and slow, crunching rock guitar. Alone, these songs could and did make grown indie-rockers weep; in context of the other varied treats that composed Last Splash, they illuminated the vast sprawl of The Breeders’ wonky pop universe, which remains, 17 years on, a great place to get lost for a while.
--Stevie Chick
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
I admit, i am a huge pixies fan, but i was always a bit hesitant checking out the breeders albums, as I wasn't a surfer rosa-fixated kim fan. 'Pod' had its moments, in the way that Beatles experimental albums do - but with 'Last Splash', i have to say that i'm in love. This is my new favourite album. There simply isn't a weak song. Its got early 90's coast indie, its got romance, its got rock, its got surf, its got attitude.
I take back my previous indifference to Kim - I'm a convert - let the adulation flow...
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Kim Deal, in her many manifestations (Pixies, Amps and Breeders) has made some of the greatest indie-pop tunes known. This offering contains most of them, eg cannonball, but if you're a Pixies fan i would go for 'Pod' or their newest, 'Title TK'.
'Last Splash' is their most commercial and therefore accessible album to date, but lacks the pace and general wierdness of the other two.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Through the nineties there have been a handful of albums which stand clear of the rest; albums which helped shape the music era in their time and remain as enjoyable now as when they first came out. Last Splash is one of those albums. The sound is a mixture of fast guitars, instrumentals, love songs and of course that legendary indie anthem 'cannonball'. Considering this album is now over 6 years old, it's aged very well. It's an album you will never be bored of playing. There are in my opinion few albums which compare to Last Spalsh in terms of originality and influence on their era; Rage Against the Machine's debut being another noticable one from the the nineties.The Breeders first album 'Pod' is good, and 'The Amps' have had their moments, but for any of the members of this band, this was their finest hour.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
More of a Tsunami than Splash
Eveything you always wanted U.S. music to be. So melodic, unforgettable, beautiful and magnificent. Mere words cannot do it justice.
Published 14 months ago by G. Brian Jones
A great album
An album with some great rock songs. Kim Deal's voice sounds great (even when speaking -"I just wanna get along" is a line I could listen to over and over). Read more
Published 19 months ago by haunted
Perfect 10.
A favorite of mine, of sorts, for quite a while. When I first got into Pixies it was around the time I was done with highschool, ca. 1990. Read more
Published on 22 Jun 2009 by MORTEN AASTAD
Get the Pixies albums. Then get this.
Escaping from the shadow of your former band isn't easy. Norman Cook, Dave Grohl and John Lydon did. Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney and Billy Corgan didn't. Read more
Published on 14 Sep 2006 by A. Ball
Gorgeous Girl-Guitar Pop
'Last Splash' is undoubtedly one the classic guitar albums of the early nineties, despite the fact that Ive never thought that Kim Deal had the songwriting ability of her... Read more
Published on 6 May 2006 by Steve
good album
This is a good album, plenty of catchy tunes and track 2, Cannonball, is very good indeed. However, I think I am in the minority here, but I actually prefer their 2002 album Title... Read more
Published on 12 Dec 2004
Somewhere between brilliant and inspired....
After the demise of the pixies and the debut album Pod, we finally see Kim Deal really come into her own. Read more
Published on 26 Jan 2002
One of the top five albums of the nineties
Here the luscious Kim Deal finally pulled away from the 4AD generica she produced with the first Breeders album, Pod. Read more
Published on 15 Nov 1999
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