With [band] plays [classic album] shows, a portion of the expectation is removed from the picture. There’s no sense of wonder over the setlist order—it’s identical to the track listing on the back of said album. However, taking out the element of surprise actually hurt The Breeders at their 9:30 Club show more than it helped them. The show didn’t really pick up steam until the end of Last Splash’s Side A and it never really hit the fever pitch of their 2009 appearance at the Black Cat.
At that particular Black Cat show, the nostalgia took on the form of celebratory reunion and helped fuel the show. It had been their first show with original bassist Josephine Wiggs in several years and as such, Kim Deal was in rare form with her sharp but good-natured banter. The tone was a little different on Saturday. Except for a few jabs at violinist Carrie Bradley’s family (her mother-in-law may or may not have been hungover) and a comment that they borrowed the mini-moog for “ROI” from Ed Lacy, “Whoever the fuck he is,” Kim’s banter was more reverential and informational. She informed everyone that the sound at the beginning of “S.O.S.” was her mom’s sewing machine which she miked and put through a Marshall amp and she repeatedly thanked the obscenely packed room for being great.
She was right that the obscenely packed room was nothing if not reverential. There was a joyous shout throughout the venue when they started their hit, “Cannonball” and the sing-a-long was particularly noticeable on “Do You Love Me Now?” However, despite a fun switch between Josephine Wiggs and Jim Macpherson for “ROI,” the band’s energy didn’t really pick up until “FlipSide,” almost half way through the album. Kelley Deal shone during “I Just Want to Get Along,” and multi-instrumentalist Carrie Bradley, who was not present for the Black Cat show because she was, as Kim said, “Having a life,” was having the time of aforementioned life as she bounced up and down with an enormous grin.
Yet as fun as it was to hear oft-ignored songs like “ROI” in all of its muddy, swirling glory, the encore seemed like they had just finished the task that they had set out to do and could have some fun, now. That’s actually kind of infuriating considering that playing the album in its entirety with their 1993 lineup was their idea—not their label’s, not their adoring public (although fans almost certainly inquired after the Pixies’ Doolittle tour.) That latent anger dissipated because The Breeders have a lot of high energy songs like “Don’t Call Home” and “Head to Toe” throughout their catalog and the encore leaned toward the intense and energetic tunes. Yet as I looked toward the past at Saturday’s Breeders show, it wasn’t to 1993 when I first heard “Cannonball,” but to 2009, when the band truly lived in the present moment.
