Track Listing

1. New Year
2. Cannon Ball
3. Invisible Man
4. No Aloha
5. RoI
6. Do You Love Me Now
7. Flipside
8. I Just Wanna Get Along
9. Mad Lucas
10. Divine Hammer
11. SOS
12. Hag
13. Saints
14. Drivin' On 9
15. Roi (1)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19939 in Music
• Released on: 1993-12-31
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
For Last Splash, her second full-length Breeders album, Kim Deal jettisoned Tanya Donelly, brought in her sister Kelley as lead guitarist (despite the fact that she could barely play when she joined) and came up with a disc full of fun, toothsome rock, not least of which was the mammoth summer-of-1993 hit "Cannonball", a celebration of mosh-pit bounce and purred innuendo. Deal's voice is coy, but the band's full of dreamy energy, rocking like her old band the Pixies without their abrasion, tomboyish rather than macho. Not everything on Last Splash is fully fleshed-out as a song, but even the more fragmentary pieces--the embittered punk mutter of "I Just Wanna Get Along", the horny daydream "Divine Hammer"--speed the album's flow. --Douglas Wolk

Customer Reviews

Get the Pixies albums. Then get this.
Escaping from the shadow of your former band isn't easy. Norman Cook, Dave Grohl and John Lydon did. Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney and Billy Corgan didn't. And neither did the Pixies songwriters Frank Black and Kim Deal. Not that they actually had a shadow to escape from, as the Pixies never actually sold that many records because they were (nearly) history when being unkempt and sullen became fashionable in 1992. If Black's 'Debaser' and Deal's 'Gigantic' had appeared in 1994 when the world was crying out for someone to fill Kurt Cobain's cardigan they probably would've been huge. As it was that task fell to Green Day, but Deal's new band, The Breeders, scored a hit with 'Cannonball' and eventually this record went platinum.

So is this album any good, or was it just a success because this sort of thing was fashionable back then? Well, 'Cannonball' isn't as good as 'Gigantic' and there's lots sludgy noise and twiddling around that spoils the flow. Even a non musician like me wonders whether some of the tracks are actually finished. It sounds great though, and for every dull bit of filler there's a catchy hook and clever lyric to redress the balance. The wonderfully cool 'Summer is readdyyyyy when you arrrrre' chorus from 'Saints' especially sticks in my head.
But it's not as good as 'Planet of Sound'. And the massive success of the Pixies comeback shows that most people would agree.

Gorgeous Girl-Guitar Pop
'Last Splash' is undoubtedly one the classic guitar albums of the early nineties, despite the fact that Ive never thought that Kim Deal had the songwriting ability of her ex-sparring partner Frank Black. At the time of its release, 'Last Splash' recieved more plaudits than Frank Black's solo outings. This can be put down to the ex-Pixies' frontman's eccentricity (which has seen him go further and further back in time with each album), whereas The Breeders' second album was much more in tune with what the music press were expecting at the time- grungy guitars, breezy vocals, and a kind of hipster coolness that pervades the record.

Furthermore, this album is a sonic treat- its exactly what you'd expect a guitar record to sound like (unless, of course, you subscribe to the Velvet Underground sound- a narrow tunnel of weedy fuzz). Instead, massive buzz-saw guitars and enormous, splashy drum-fills abound, but at the the same time there's a pleasingly rough-and-ready feel to the record, particularly on the instrumental 'Flipside' which has a lovely 'live' sound to it.

Indeed, it's the beefy sound which is the album's main asset, which bolsters the otherwise pretty tuneless opener "New Year." Ive never thought that the stop-start chugging of "Cannonball" was that great either, but then the album really picks up with the gorgeous "Invisible Man" and "No Aloha," which perfectly marry Kim's lovely voice with slow-burning, coruscating guitars. "Do You Love Me Now?" is another pop gem, and I'm also a great fan of "Roi," an experimental number of layered guitar noise which I think works beautifully. From then on, the album ranges between swaggeringly cool garage rock ("Saints" and "I Just Wanna Get Along"), to more bona fide pop ("Divine Hammer" and "Drivin' On") with a smidgeon of experimentalism for good measure ("Mad Lucas," which tips a nod to Sonic Youth.)

For any Pixies fan, its an essential purchase, but I think anyone who likes a bit of spunky guitar-pop could do worse than check out this little gem (and it's got great sleeve artwork too).

good album
This is a good album, plenty of catchy tunes and track 2, Cannonball, is very good indeed. However, I think I am in the minority here, but I actually prefer their 2002 album Title TK. Last Splash is slightly less consistent and the pace slows a bit too often for my liking. I think Title TK is technically and emotionally superior, and it's a more enjoyable listen as well. That's not to say this is a bad album, it's certainly worth buying and I have given it 4 stars.