Kim Deal Talks New Breeders Album, Pixies, German
"I would rather have one song that people actually like than 15 songs that they can barely stand. But that's just me."

Most of the attention focused on Kim Deal in the last few years has come from her participation in the über-successful Pixies reunion. But she recently turned the spotlight to her other well-regarded, super successful indie rock band, the Breeders. After a recording hiatus of over five years, the Breeders will return with Mountain Battles, the follow-up to 2002's Title TK, on April 7/8 (in the UK/U.S., respectively) via 4AD.

We caught up with Deal to talk about the album, and she was a blast: friendly, funny, and full of anecdotes and ideas. In our conversation, she discussed her recent appearance at the "The Second City That Never Sleeps: Letters to Santa" benefit, her adventures in speaking German for a Battles song, a technological explanation for the rarity of quality songwriting in the ProTools era, and why a new Pixies album just isn't going to happen.

Pitchfork: It's been five years since Title TK was released. What took Mountain Battles so long to come together?

KD: Well, sometimes we weren't at the studio, we were just at the house in Ohio working on stuff. It's weird, because ProTools has done this-- like, I'm a singer/songwriter, so I could do this in my bedroom by myself, and I would have to just get the...I don't know, web designer, to come over to put the measures up, to pull the ProTools up. It really doesn't matter if anyone else is involved, so that can be quite freeing, and things can be turned around quite quickly like that, if all I'm thinking about is, "What time do I want the spacebar-pusher to come over today?"

But if there's an actual band, and I own actual instruments, and actual tubes have to be replaced, and people actually have to fly in, and they have lives, and you have to go over the song-- because remember, this is tape. It's not like, "Uh...here's the idea of the chorus. We're going to use the Pretenders drums from the first record, 'cause they sound so good," you know? That's not how we do it. Jose [Medeles], the drummer, has to fly in, and we actually have to write a song from beginning to end that sounds cool. And if it doesn't sound cool at this part, it's not like we can just go, "Yeah, let's rearrange that in ProTools," you know? It's just a totally different way of thinking.

I'm not the quickest, most prolific writer either. I would never pretend to be. I don't think prolific-ness is equal to quality at all. I would rather have one song that people actually like than 15 songs that they can barely stand. But that's just me.

Another thing is, I think it's kind of ballsy to sit there and think that [people want to listen] if it wasn't special and we weren't trying to do something we would want to listen to. Why is this song actually here? Why is this song taking up two-and-a-half minutes of my life? Is it just because somebody doesn't have tape anymore and so the amount of recording space is unlimited? That's why I'm sitting here listening to this, because nothing stopped you from doing it, but there's not really a reason to do it? I don't know. If that was me, and I was listening to me, I would get mad, like, "Why are you fucking doing this?" It doesn't have to be great, but it seems like at least there should be kind of a reason. And it's hard to come up with a fucking good reason to write something, I think.

Pitchfork: You keep hinting at one of the issues that would be at the center of making a new Pixies record, namely whether or not it's necessary. In recent interviews, you say it's not, that touring is fun but that a new record might tarnish some of the old memories.

KD: [When] this whole thing started out, we were going to do a couple of shows. Joe [Santiago] said he had one kid and one was on the way, and he said, "Do you wanna do it?" And I said, "Oh God, no, Joe!" And I told everybody this, but nobody believes me. And he said, "Kim, this is really important to me. It will change my school district, where I can put my daughter into school." And I said, "Okay, of course. Of course, I will do this."

I thought it was going to be a couple of shows, and it turned out really good. I had a really good time doing it. People were just so happy we were doing it. It was just so nice, like [an] "it's over, thank you, bye," kind of thing. And so there was never any-- I don't know, I think it gets talked about whenever Charles [Thompson, aka Frank Black] has any release, which is often. I have a feeling that's when he talks about it more than anything. Because him and Joe haven't gotten together to write any songs, so I think it's kind of something to bring up whenever he needs press. That's the only time I hear about it. I have no idea, dude.

Pitchfork: Is there anything different about the sound of Mountain Battles as compared to other Breeders albums?

KD: Well, let's see... I still don't like the ProTools thing, but I guess I'm kind of a dork. I think a lot of people like ProTools. I think a lot of people use it. You know, like, Bob Dylan and Tom Petty...everybody, Dolly Parton. When you think of authentic musicians and players, they don't fucking go on tape. They wouldn't fucking bother with it, you know?

Pitchfork: What about the songs themselves?

KD: I like the songs, actually [laughs]. I did notice this: that each song is definitely its own song. And then, when it goes into the next song, that's its own song. And then it goes into the next song, and that's its own song.

Okay now, I know-- here's the difference of that. You know when you put on a Ramones record, right? And it's the Ramones, so it's great; it doesn't really matter which song you're gonna put on, because they all sound pretty much the same anyway, right? Because it's the Ramones, and that's what they do, right? And that's what I love, but track number five is going to sound pretty close to track number eight. I might like the chorus shout-out better on track one than I do on track number eight, but right away I'll be able to tell it's the Ramones' song.

[It's] kind of the same thing about AC/DC, except that I like the Ramones better than AC/DC. But it's kind of the same thing with AC/DC. Track one is going to sound like a slow blues grunt, and track eight will probably sound like "Slow Blues Grunt II" from AC/DC. I might like track one better because I think it's got a better catch phrase than track eight, but it definitely sounds pretty much the same, right? And those are great records, and I like records like that, but we didn't make a record like that. I'm not even sure if I like that [we didn't do that], but I know that I didn't [make that kind of record]. So that's kind of weird, but I didn't do it on purpose, either!

Pitchfork: It just ended up that way.

KD: Yes, it did. And it doesn't help that Kelley sings Spanish on that song ["Regalame Esta Noche"], and then we sing German on another song ["German Studies"].

Pitchfork: I was just going to ask about that. What brought that on? From what I've read in other interviews, it seems like you did it because you liked the sound of the languages.

KD: Absolutely. So I'm in the four-track, and I've got this simple riff [sings riff] on my guitar, and of course, now I gotta grab the microphone. I think it sounds cool, so I've got to sing something over it. I know that I want to sing German on top of it. It's just going to sound cooler. So I figured out the words that I would like to sing, and I knew that I wanted this silly, kind of simple riff that's kind of middling. It has no high frequency or low. It's just this taut, tense thing that continues on, relentless! [Sings riff] I knew that that would be a cool place to put Wagnerian harmonies of me and Kelley, these harmonies in German that go [sings gibberish German] whatever, and I knew that I wanted to stop in the song so that I could say "und so weiter."

Pitchfork: Which means what?

KD: "And so on...and so on" in German. I knew I wanted all that, so we just had to get all the words together, and then I learned how to sing them in German.

Pitchfork: And I heard you actually sought out a German professor or expert?

KD: Well, you know, my idea was to just go on the computer, and just like, see what the translation thingermajob does. So we did that, but it doesn't really work in the lyric world of having to come up with phrases and having the pronunciation problems. So we kind of sat on this song, thinking, "Yeah, I can kind of hear the lyrics in English, but I don't even think this song will work-- I'm not going to feel cool doing it unless it's in German." So it just sat around. And then Kelley calls me and says, "Hi! We're meeting with Elka. She's a German instructor at the college nearby." So we went to her house, and she helped us with the lyrics, how to say this and that. "Ich lebe hier." "Ich lebe hier" means "I live here."

Pitchfork: Was this woman a fan of yours at all?

KD: Oh god, no.

Pitchfork: Has she heard the song?

KD: No, she hasn't yet. I wanted to play it to her, because I wanted to check on the pronunciation, but she had gone out of the country for a little bit. She's still here; she only lives a few blocks away. I want to give her a copy. But we had a German bus driver on the Pixies tour, so I played him the track. But he's German, so instead of going, "Yeah, yeah, sounds good, I think you did a good job," he said, "Um, yes. There are many mistakes." [laughs]

Pitchfork: Did you fix those mistakes, or did you figure most people wouldn't notice?

KD: Well, you know, I don't want to sound like I'm German. That's not the point, is it? That's not funny. Being so rude that I sound German is, I mean, not [just] not funny, but also not true. So there's nothing funny or even interesting about that, because it's just absolutely not true. Also, do you know when somebody's singing something, and they're foreign, so it sounds cool when they're singing English? They don't quite get it, so it sounds cool, right? So I would think that me singing in German but obviously not being very German would sound pretty cool!

But then him and his fräulein co-bus-person-- because you need two bus drivers in Europe, that's the law if you go over a certain amount of miles-- anyway, it was some woman, and they began talking in German and kind of giggling as they listened. And I'm like, "No, seriously, I'm not saying, like, 'Did I spill green Jell-O on my foot?' I'm saying it correctly." And I knew I was because a German told me how to do it, so you know they're going to be quite precise.

And then they started saying, "Licht, licht, licht...light, light, light. Now, you say 'licked', and they would probably say that maybe in Berlin, hahaha." I guess that's funny that Berlin might say that. I guess it should be more "leecht" with an "ee." Instead of a soft "e," it should have been a hard "e."

Pitchfork: So they just thought it was a total joke?

KD: And so I laughed, and laughed, and laughed! [laughs]

Pitchfork: What was performing at the Second City event like?

Kim Deal: Well they do 24-hour marathons for underprivileged children in Chicago. I guess Steve [Albini] and Heather [Whinna] run the charity thing, and Heather manages Second City. So the people who do comedy at Second City, they do improv for 24 hours straight. And they have guests! Like, Jeff Tweedy always kicks it off, and [there are] auctions throughout the 24-hour period. Like, he [Tweedy] auctioned performing at a person's house, and they can invite 10 or 12 or 14 of their friends over, and that went for a certain price, $20,000 or something like that. And they ended up raising $80,000 for the whole 24-hour period!

Pitchfork: You performed with your sister Kelley, right?

KD: Yeah, me and Kelley. We flew up there. Heather asked me two years ago when I was on tour in Japan, with the Pixies. And then last year, me and Kelley and the Breeders were up at Steve Albini's studio, and I hadn't been home to my mother's-- it was my mother's birthday so it didn't seem cool to do. So I brought it up this year, and I said to Heather, "Hey guess what, this year we can do the charity [event]!"

Pitchfork: So did you and Kelley just do an acoustic set? You didn't do any improv, did you?

KD: We did a-- okay, Albini was there. Like, Shellac played last year, but he's not very Jim Croce, so they weren't there, [but] he wanted to contribute somehow. So at 1:00 [a.m.], me and Kelley started asking him questions-- we did a question and answer period. And it's just a help so, like, the people who are doing improv can go to the bathroom, [the audience has] somebody new to talk to, there's somebody actually in the club then, that kind of thing. So we started at 1:00, and me and Steve and Kel asked questions, and then the improv people came back on, and me and Kelley did a couple of songs at 3:30, and then the improv people came back on-- well, anyway, me and Kelley ended up leaving at 7:00 in the morning.

Pitchfork: Oh, wow.

KD: Yeah. No drugs. I thought I was gonna die.

Video: The Breeders: Cannonball [from the Last Splash LP]