POP MUSIC REVIEW : Breeders: Deal Sisters in Harmony

The Breeders, a mostly female semi-supergroup that includes Kim Deal of the Pixies and her identical twin Kelley, headlined a packed Whisky on Sunday and shared something with every band that’s ever played a college dorm party: an absolutely standard set of references (Beatles, Velvets, Pixies), a sort of vacillating between art-drone and pop-drone, and a flat, half-nervous, half pajama-party-relaxed groove. They rocked.

When Kim and Kelley harmonized, there was the odd sensation of one woman’s voice being split into two pitches, so closely were they matched. Sometimes there was a nice interplay between Kim’s voice and her sister’s guitar lines in roughly the same register at roughly the same volume, the kind of graceful counterpoint you don’t expect in garagey rock ‘n’ roll. Alone among new-rock groups, the Breeders approximate the weird, long-lined, non-hooky pop cantilena of the Yoko-era John Lennon.

Kim Deal sang in the breathy, understated manner that she made famous in the Pixies, but unlike the Pixies, the Breeders underplayed behind her, as if they were afraid of drowning her out. Sometimes they seemed as tentative as if they were playing their first show, as if the harmonic fabric might at any moment succumb to entropy and collapse, neo-pop wispiness taken to a new level somewhere beyond even the ultra-winsomeness of Beat Happening. Sometimes, especially when Kelley Deal was singing, the Breeders whanged away like the experienced touring band they mostly are.