The Breeders, Rock City, Nottingham

Supported By Big Joanie

Tonight’s openers are London based Big Joanie. That’s a band not a person, named after founder Stephanie Phillips’ Mum and with the ‘big’ meaning confident. They formed amid London’s DIY punk scene in 2013 and have two albums out there.

The four piece take the stage with guitar, keyboards, drums and Phillips wielding a tambourine. It’s an odd mix but they add in bass and a second guitar later. Are they a punk band? or something else? It’s hard to tell. They do entertain us with some interesting wordplay and reasonable tunes but they’re not really for me. 

So on to the headliners...

Midway through tonight’s set The Breeders’ Jim Macpherson gets out from behind his drum kit and comes down to the front of the stage. He introduces the rest of the band and then casually mentions that it was 1993 the last time they played Rock City.

Surely not? It really has been a while then. I didn’t actually see them in Nottingham on that occasion. For reasons I can’t recall, I mean it was 30 years ago, I went to Sheffield University to see them the night before. I probably had some football going on. They did then play Nottingham Trent in 2008 but I didn’t make it to that either.

Often I give my apologies why I haven’t seen a band for a long period. This time, with only one chance in 30 years, it’s clearly not all my fault. Meanwhile other people have the better excuse of not being born. Tonight the audience is about a 50-50 split tonight between young and old, so the band can feel smug that they’re introducing a whole new generation to their music.

Therefore tonight is special is for many reasons and from the first few bars of ‘Saints’ everyone is buzzing. It’s not just about music because here is the nicest band on the planet who are clearly ridiculously happy just to be here and that makes a big difference to everyone’s experience. Even if it has taken them 30 years to find the right page on the atlas.

They’re going to be at Glastonbury the next day, as they tell us obviously, and if you watch that performance they grin their way through that one too.

The set is, as you’d expect, ‘Last Splash’ heavy but there is excellence too from their debut ‘Pod’ (‘Doe’ is amazing, ‘Opened’ is amazing etc etc) along with selections from their other records such as the wonderful ‘Huffer’ from 2002’s ‘Title TK’.

Kim Deal and her cryptic lyrics dominate most of the night but it’s over to sister Kelley for ‘I Don’t Get Along and then to Josephine Wiggs for the penultimate track ‘Megagoth’ which morphs into the Pixies ‘Gigantic’ which of course Kim originally wrote and sung.

And of course there’s the legendary ‘Cannonball’ with its classic opening of those distorted vocals and amazing bassline.

In total it takes them only ninety minutes to blitz through a 21 song set of songs that rarely break three minutes and often don’t even exceed two. 

Then there are two more to come in the encore, the last of which is the pure delight of ‘Divine Hammer’ that sends everyone home with a smile as wide as the band’s. Who.. have I mentioned how nice they all are? Just to prove that Josephine ends the night by taking all the band’s set lists which have been turned into paper planes and sends them flying into the crowd. Such a nice night.