The Breeders - When I Was A Painter
This was the first song by The Breeders that I ever heard. It was played on the local college radio station one afternoon, apparently right as I got home from school, because the first radio tape I had of it started in the middle of the second verse. The thing that stood out to me on first listen was Carrie Bradley’s violin. I loved that sick downward slide from the verses into the choruses, the way every other instrument in the band stopped and, by herself, she played a note that sounded like a record player running down. It went on too long, too—in order to keep on beat, it needed to last four beats, but instead it lasts five, just far enough over the time limit to throw off everyone hearing the song. Now, when I listen to it, I recognize that the way the note slides downward is a key change. The verses are in a slightly higher key than the choruses, and the violin transition may sound sick, but it makes the overall transition from verse to chorus sound better than it otherwise would. But now, I’m a musician, and I can hear stuff like that. When I was 14 and hearing this song for the first time, I was just a wide-eyed teenager with a hand-me-down classical guitar he hadn’t yet learned how to play. I loved how off-kilter the violin made this entire song sound.
It has a lot of other elements to offer, though, which becomes clear on further listenings. During the song’s verses, Kim Deal’s vocal melody, which is chirpy and singsong, is echoed by that of the violin. Deal also picks out a simple one-note rhythm guitar part underneath the violin and her vocals, but both Donelly and Wiggs remain quiet during the verses, leaving Walford’s drumming to carry the rhythm. This emphasizes the strange melody of the verses, and makes the contrast that much greater when Bradley’s violin slides into each chorus, at which time Donelly, Wiggs and Walford kick in with full force, pounding out a lower, heavier chorus. The gap between verses and choruses is filled by Bradley’s violin, but whenever the band transitions between the end of a chorus and the beginning of the next verse, it’s Walford’s drums that bridge the gap. His drums sound excellent on this song, and on Pod as a whole. Part of that is certainly due to the production of Steve Albini, who is known for his excellent drum sound, but it’s also got a lot to do with Walford’s pounding snare sound and precise timekeeping.
In fact, I think a lot of what makes Pod such a distinctive and excellent sounding album has to do with Steve Albini—not so much his production, as what his production symbolizes. At the time Pod was recorded, the Pixies had already followed up Surfer Rosa with Doolittle, on which they’d used Gil Norton as a producer. The material on Doolittle had its quirks, as all Pixies material would, but it also had a slicker, more pop-friendly production style. Albini’s no-frills sound, which made the album sound like you were sitting in the room with the band as they played, harked back to an earlier Pixies sound, with far less conventional rock elements. Pod was a subtle communication from Deal that she’d liked the earlier Pixies style better, that if she were in charge, they’d have continued along those lines.
“When I Was A Painter” most closely resembles Surfer Rosa material in the spatial relationship between instruments. There are almost no points during the song when all five members of the band are playing at the same time. As I’ve mentioned, Donelly and Wiggs don’t play on the verses. Then, once Carrie Bradley’s violin leads the band through the transition from verse to chorus, it drops out to make way for Donelly’s electric guitar. At the end of each chorus, everything drops out, leaving only Walford’s drumming. And at the end of the song, after a brief lead guitar break by Donelly, during which Deal’s rhythm guitar stops, Donelly also stops playing, and the last 30 seconds or so of the song feature only bass and drums, playing through the chorus riff in a heavy, drony loop that bears no resemblance to the singsongy verse with which the song started out. The sound of “When I Was A Painter” is relatively standard alternative rock as it existed at the dawn of the 90s. But in its construction, it more closely resembles dub, or the droning, patchwork instrumentation of mid-70s krautrock. It’s debatable whether the Pixies abandoned this songwriting template too quickly, but the Breeders definitely made good use of it on their own behalf.
