Cannonball

The Breeders formed in 1989 as a side project. Kim Deal played bass and sang in the Pixies. Tanya Donelly played guitar in Throwing Muses. Both had songs their main bands would not record. They started The Breeders together on 4AD. Pod, the debut album, appeared in 1990. Steve Albini recorded it. By 1992, Donelly had left to start Belly. Kim asked her twin sister Kelley to play second guitar. Jim MacPherson came in on drums. Josephine Wiggs stayed on bass. The four of them recorded in San Francisco and Dayton. Last Splash arrived August 30, 1993. It did not sound like anything else on the radio that summer.

Cannonball came out as a single on August 9, 1993. Three weeks before the album. Kim Deal wrote it. She and Mark Freegard produced it together. The song opens with a blurted bass figure that drops into a riff that should not work but does. Deal’s vocal sits direct in the mix. The album also credits Kelley Deal as performer on a Kenmore 12-stitch. A sewing machine. Listed in the production credits alongside bass and drums and violin. The sound they made was the sound of people doing exactly what they wanted.

Thirty-three years ago today, Last Splash arrived. It landed in 1993 alongside records that defined that moment in American rock. It was not a grunge record. It was not trying to be one. The songs were brief and strange and occasionally beautiful. Cannonball was the one that made it past the gate. It still sounds alive. Bands that came after heard it and changed direction. The people who made it were working outside the logic of the industry around them. Thirty-three years is a long time for a song to keep its edge.