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It's my pleasure to kick off a Breeders review without feeling the need to hypothesize as to what the hell took 'em so long. I mean, this time, we know: In the year or so since the fitfully rewarding Mountain Battles, the Breeders have toured some, severed ties with 4AD, and-- in London, Chicago, and Dayton-- laid down the tracks that became their self-released Fate to Fatal EP. And, while you'd be hard up to find anybody who'd ever met 'Roi' who'll tell you the Breeders hit any kind of artistic peak in this decade, by all accounts, the long periods of infighting and inebriation and, worst of all, inactivity that characterize far too much of their career appear behind 'em. Shucks, the baddest twins in rock have even been biding their time down at the Dick Blick, and the hand-screened covers of the limited vinyl edish of Fate to Fatal will have been touched by at least one Deal, maybe both. As far as the return of the physical record as fetish object, well, you're not gonna do a lot better than that.

As far as the record itself, though, Fate to Fatal's just a little lucky it's got all that other stuff working for it. For a four-song affair, there's a lot to talk about before we get into how this music sounds: The packaging, yes, but Screaming Tree/Gutter Twin/hellspawn Mark Lanegan sings one of the tunes, and another's a cover of a Bob Marley cut. When I'm sliding the record out of its delightfully wonky cardboard sleeve, I am one happy sonofagun; I mean, I'm not immune to the charms of a quirky object made just for me and 999 other lucky sods by a band I've cared about for a good decade and a half. Once the needle hits Fate to Fatal, though, my mood swings. Like every other Breeders record before it, Fate to Fatal's opener kills-- though. All brute force and giddy charm, the eponymous leadoff track is the Breeders at their most jarring and most exuberant, with churning power-chords beating out a kinda rhythm for the Deal gals to holler and shout over. But, oh, when they move from a scream to a whisper and back again, does it ever sound good.

For now, Queen Daenerys is carving a path through Slaver's Bay - not of conquest but of liberation. Dzhazovie pesni dlya vokaljnogo ansamblya noti.

The Deals singing in tandem make one of the great noises in rock, and when you throw 'em all over a tune this kinetic, this heady, this pleasure-center-smacking, it just couldn't feel more right. Plus, I rather like my Breeders careening and stumbling and anti-produced. Then there's the Lanegan-wheezed 'The Last Time', on which the very special guest feels genuinely extraneous. It's a pretty nothing-song to begin with, little more than some strumming and a couple of ominous-sounding throwaway lines for the guy to growl and, sweet mercy, some much-needed atmospheric wooze around what I suppose you'd call the chorus. After the headrush of 'Fate to Fatal', the staid, static 'Last Time' is a total bringdown.

The Breeders have a history with unadorned, Everly Brothers-style harmony-heavy acoustic cuts (covers, often), and their Steve Albini-recorded take on Bob Marley's 'Chances Are' doesn't stray from the formula much. It's plenty gorgeous, but it's a fairly slow acoustic version of another song, and it's terribly reminiscent of their equally fine take on Hank Williams' 'I Can't Help It (If I'm Still In Love With You)' from the 'Divine Hammer' single and their own 'Here No More' from Mountain Battles. I could listen to them sing all day, and I'm awfully glad it's not 'Buffalo Soldier', but it, like so many other attempts at Bob Marley tunes before it, doesn't linger. Fate to Fatal touches down with the spindly 'Pinnacle Hollow', which, you'll notice, sounds a good bit like a demo.