Pod was the debut album by The Breeders, released in 1990 by 4AD Records.
Pod was the only Breeders album to feature their original lineup. Though the Breeders have come in later years to be identified with twin sisters Kim and Kelley Deal, Kelley was not an original member of the band. Instead, the band’s original lead guitarist was Tanya Donelly, then a member of Throwing Muses. The lineup was rounded out by violinist Carrie Bradley of Ed’s Redeeming Qualities, bassist Josephine Wiggs of The Perfect Disaster, and drummer Britt Walford of Slint. Their formation was inspired by Kim Deal’s frustration with her limited creative role in The Pixies. “Gigantic,” the only song on debut Pixies full-length Surfer Rosa to be written and sung by Deal, became a college radio hit, frustrating band leader Charles Thompson (aka Black Francis, aka Frank Black). He decreed that Deal would no longer be allowed to write or sing in The Pixies, and though she co-wrote one song on followup Doolittle, and sang backup on another, for the most part the ban stuck. Deal sought another outlet for her frustrated creativity, and during a Pixies/Throwing Muses tour, she and Donelly decided to form a side project.
Other than Deal and Donelly, though, the early Breeders didn’t have a set lineup to speak of. The demo tape that captured 4AD’s interest featured a bassist named Ray Halliday (who ended up with two co-writing credits on Pod, even though he never played on any official Breeders recordings) and four different drummers. When the time came to record an album, Deal, Donelly, and Bradley met up with Steve Albini in Scotland. While there, they recruited Englishwoman Wiggs as bassist, and Steve Albini suggested his friend Britt Walford as drummer. Walford, then heavily involved with Slint (who would record their seminal album Spiderland six months later), did not want to be officially associated with The Breeders, and was credited on Pod as “Shannon Doughton.” Other aliases he used during his time in the Breeders included “Mike Hunt” and “Roy Orbison.”
For Kim Deal, the Breeders served the purpose of giving her a creative outlet that she was denied in the Pixies. Aside from a cover of John Lennon’s “Happiness Is A Warm Gun” that was different enough from the original to seem more like an original composition than a cover, Deal wrote or co-wrote every song on Pod. The side project was less satisfying for Tanya Donelly, who now had two bands in which she played second fiddle to another songwriter (in Throwing Muses, it was her stepsister, Kristin Hersh, who wrote almost every song). At the end of 1991, after recording a follow-up EP, Safari, Donelly quit both the Breeders and the Throwing Muses to start Belly, a band in which she could finally be the leader. Kelley Deal had replaced Carrie Bradley in the band’s lineup on Safari, leaving them with three guitarists and the ability to soldier on without Donelly. When Britt Walford also quit the band after Safari, not wishing to become a full-fledged touring member of the band, he was replaced by Guided By Voices drummer Jim McPherson, giving the world the lineup of the Breeders that would reach their greatest levels of fame with 1993’s Last Splash. This lineup of the band was pretty great in their own right, but it was noticeably different from the version that recorded Pod. That original lineup is less well-remembered, but certainly deserving of attention. No less an authority than Kurt Cobain is widely quoted as calling Pod one of his favorite albums ever, and listening to it, it’s easy to see why.
