The Breeders @ Black Cat
Having to find a last minute replacement bassist is usually not the secret to putting on a phenomenal show. When that bassist is from your band's original lineup, however, it's a recipe for celebratory nostalgia.
Such was the case at Friday night's Breeders show at the Black Cat. When current Breeders bassist Mando Lopez had to leave the tour to witness his girlfriend give birth, (or as singer/guitarist/legend Kim Deal put it, "Have a bastard,") the band called in original bassist Josephine Wiggs to fill in. She hadn't played with the band since 2005, and although she'd probably only relearned the parts earlier that day, the band took every possible opportunity to celebrate her presence. They introduced Wiggs early on, praised her for doing well and picked on her good-naturedly throughout the set.
Whether Wiggs' presence triggered a nostalgia trip or whether the band preferred to stick to songs she'd been familiar with, the set list was chock full of early material. They played a few vaguely more recent songs, such as "Little Fury" from Title Tk and a track from The Amps (essentially a different lineup of The Breeders) album Pacer, but the vast majority of the set came from 1993's Last Splash. The Deal sisters didn't even wait to introduce the prime material. By song number three, the noisy crowd got even noisier as they played "Divine Hammer," and two songs later, Kim Deal introduced some familiar heavy vocals into the vocoder, shocking the audience into an excited confusion. They couldn't really be playing "Cannonball," this early in the set, could they?
They could and they did. Had it been 15 years earlier, this might have been a serious momentum killer, but no early climaxes nor missed notes could have ruined the The Breeders' good time. Kim Deal had a good laugh at everybody. When Kelley picked up a violin for "Drivin' on 9," Kim picked on former bandmate Carrie Bradley, who played the instrument on Last Splash, joking that she no longer joined them onstage outside of NYC since she "had a life." She picked on guitarist Cheryl Lyndsey, who took the bass to give Wiggs a break for being from Florida. She even picked on The Beatles, joking that the band covered the legendary Liverpudlians, since they were "classy like that." This night, happiness was not a warm gun. Happiness was the Black Cat crowd after the all-too-brief set, especially those who got autographs from the Deals after they put up their guitars. This was a show for the books.