The Breeders Mountain Battles

2008's Mountain Battles served as the Breeders fourth studio effort and first since 2002's Title TK. By turns goofy, groovy, melancholy, strung-out, catchy, atmospheric and at times impossibly lovely, Mountain Battles underlines that Kim Deal is a songwriter and musician of rare intuition. Her songs move from offhand charm to emotional truth with casual grace, balancing scuffed-up noise against fraught silence; timeless structures against strange new shapes. And throughout, of course, there's Kim's unique voice; languid, urgent, bruised and beautiful. In short, Mountain Battles captures all the bittersweet electricity of classic Breeders records like Pod and Last Splash, and still manages to break new ground. It was recorded with a number of engineers including Steve Albini, Erika Larson, Manny Nieto and Ben Mumphrey.