All Nerve

The Breeders’ music is a ball of little contrasts: beautiful but rough, off-hand but confident, spacey but tactile, lived-in—an unfamiliar object knit from yarn. The group's first album with a fully reunited lineup from their breakthrough LP, <i>Last Splash</i>, finds them back on their private path, balancing rave-ups (“Nervous Mary”, “Wait in the Car”) with heavy-lidded ballads (“All Nerve”, “Dawn: Making an Effort”) and blasts of noise with girlish harmonies, gently pushing the familiar garage-band template in new directions. As always, their ace remains an ability to elevate naiveté to mysterious, almost supernatural levels—just listen to “Walking with a Killer”.