The Breeders are celebrating the 20th anniversary of their platinum record Last Splash with the LSXX World Tour, on which they play the entire album, start to finish. Guitarist Kelley Deal spoke with City Paper while running pre-tour errands.
Did you know you were making something special with Last Splash?
I think if you're sitting there going, "Oh my God, I'm making greatness," you're a douche. But we certainly didn't sit around thinking, "What I'm making is sucking." I think we were totally into it. As we play it from start to finish, how each song goes into the next, it's just a fabulous piece of music. You hear some country, some pop, a little bit of kraut rock, and it does it effortlessly.
Has the landscape changed at all for women in bands since you started?
Back then, there were so many chicks in bands it was ridiculous. It was awesome. You didn't think it was special, that was just how it was. Now, I'm not saying that there's not, but it doesn't seem as prevalent. Does it?
The Breeders are important to a lot of female musicians, but the band seemed less about "women who rock" than about people who happened to be women, rocking.
The idea [of] a female who happens to be in a band, but who is not rocking the feminist identity somehow — if you have to explain why that's really kind of a stupid [distinction] — then you're just the other side of a coin. If you're not ignoring females in rock, you're "celebrating" females in rock — that's the same fucking coin. It's time to just take it off the table.
