Live Review: THE BREEDERS @ Sydney Opera House

The Breeders performed at the Sydney Opera House on 30 November. Although they’ve not set foot on these shores since 2013, the fans’ favourite line-up consisting of the Deal sisters (identical twins Kim and Kelley), Josephine Wiggs and drummer Jim Macpherson that reformed in 2012, played to a packed audience in the Opera House Concert Hall. Although the name ‘Breeders’ was used by the Deal sisters for a folk duo they formed in their teens, the contemporary version of The Breeders began in 1989 when Kim Deal, bassist in The Pixies, got together with Tanya Donnelly, then guitarist of Throwing Muses, whilst The Pixies were on hiatus. A critically-acclaimed album, Pod, was released in the interim, which the troubled Nirvana singer-songwriter Kurt Cobain hailed as his favourite album.

A year later The Pixies disbanded, so Kim, who felt creatively stifled in the group, was enabled to focus her songwriting talents on the new project. In time, Kim’s twin sister Kelley joined a revised line-up of The Breeders (Donnelly went on to form Belly) and in 1993 they recorded the commercially successful Last Splash. This included the singles Divine Hammer and Cannonball, as well as Drivin’ On Nine, No Aloha and tonight’s encores, I Just Wanna Get Along and Do You Love Me Now; catchy, edgy numbers that typify The Breeders’ alt-rock style of bittersweet melodies.

They were all received at the Opera House to a rousing reception, Cannonball especially propelling the sit-down audience into a dancing mass, which made me wonder why rows of chairs were stationed all the way to the edge of the stage. The Opera House Concert Hall is a wonderful arena to appreciate music. Although, traditionally, it has been used for classical concerts, opera and ballet, the layered, genre-defying rock melodies of The Breeders– alternately soothing then fast-and-abrasive, sometimes within the same song! – were magnificently captured. Kyle, “from the basements of Dayton, Ohio,” also joined them on keyboards for one song.