Canon in Miniature #183

Breeders Safari

1992; 4AD

The differences between the Breeders’ first two albums were as marked as they could get while still sounding like fundamentally the same band. Pod was a dark-tinged, angular album with more post-punk influence than anything; Last Splash was much less sinister and unsettling, essentially a spiky pop album in slightly more alternative clothing. Both albums are good, almost equally good in my opinion, but they felt far removed from each other that they almost felt like the band’s first and fifth albums with all the transitional work cut out of the continuum. Instead of a slow evolution from dank to bright hitting all stops in between, the band just hopped contentedly from the former to the latter without any fanfare whatsoever. It’s not that that sort of abrupt transition is unheard of, but the brusqueness of it in this case, even with three full years between releases, makes for a fairly disjointed discography on that level.

You’d think that the lone EP they released in the interim would clear up a bit of the transitional stage, but Safari really only doubles down on the differences between those two albums. It’s bookended by simple pop songs with a middle duo that’s more claustrophobic and unsettling than even Pod’s darkest moments, essentially pulling the band’s sound in two directions simultaneously. The juxtaposition of the two sounds works nicely though, with the understated grace of opener “Do You Love Me Now?” acting as a nice counterbalance to the almost Slint-esque dynamics of “Don’t Call Home” and the band’s cover of “So Sad About Us” acts as a nice palate cleanser after the full on rock out of the title track. The duality that exists between the band’s two full lengths isn’t so much explained as it is underlined and highlighted; this was a band in the throes of change that they weren’t quite sure what to do with. The moves towards the more indie-pop sound of Last Splash are confident and well sketched out, but the more Pod-like tracks feel more lived in and comfortable, “Don’t Call Home” especially.

Oddly I’m not bothered by the consrasting tones on display as much as I usually am when this type of two-headed beast pops onto my radar. It definitely helps that the songs themselves are pretty uniformly great, nowhere near as inconsistent as either LP could be and a nice demonstration of why some bands just work better in smaller does. Safari may not provide much in the way of answers as far as what happened between the band’s two albums, but the EP itself unfolds beautifully and might just be the best stretch of four songs that the Deal sisters have been responsible for. Even if it sounds like two different bands mashed together, the over-riding craft obscures the tonal imbalance enough that I can’t fault it too much for lack of unity. [7.7]