The new Breeders disc, Mountain Battles, sounds an awful lot like the very first Breeders album, Pod. Most of the songs unfold at a sluggish pace, with Kim Deal’s ethereal vocals often the heaviest component of the songs within. In fact. there’s very little here reminiscent of the pop leanings explored on Last Splash, although the bouncy “Walk It Off” could have fit in alongside any of that album’s tracks. And were this a Major Label offering I suspect they’d bring in another producer to scrape the grime off “It’s The love” to reveal the shiny pop tune underneath.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the “comeback album” Title TK, but I’m enjoying this return to form more than I thought I would. To be honest, when I first heard Pod, I hated Albini’s production and though the whole thing dragged, but after listening to the album over and over during the interminable wait the group made us sit through before finally recording Last Splash, I grew to appreciate the subtle intricacies Pod offered up. Mountain Battles plots the same path, and while it doesn’t outdo its almost 2-decade-old predecessor, it does prove the band is slowly marking a clear return to form.