The Breeders

For a platinum-selling record, Last Splash is pretty strange and uncompromising. It's punk-rock, it's loud indie rock, and it's pure-pop bubblegum slop. "Cannonball" is a staple of alt radio these days, but it wasn't long ago that hearing the song was a revelation. Throw in "Divine Hammer" and "Drivin' on 9," and you've got a great album.

It was with the late and much lamented ultra-indie Blake Babies that Juliana Hatfield began
becoming an alternative dream heroine -- beautiful, bold, disaffected. On her second solo
outing, "Become What You Are," she demonstrates that she has got the goods for good. Her
unapologetically -- even indulgently -- girlish vocals in honeyed contrast to her bitter,
fuzz-toned guitar, she pens fractured pop songs whose content would be heave... More >

Kim Deal can't sing and neither can Kelley--not with force, anyway. But what the hey. Unabashed models of feminine weakness, they murmur, they chant, they make a pass at harmonizing, thus revealing the once-ominous tunings of sonic youths everywhere for the benign art-school move they are. No way are these songs "pop"--they won't make little children smile or Mom pat her foot. But their sweetness is no less certain for that, and considerably rarer. (Grade - A-)