"Every hero bores us at last" - Ralph Waldo Emerson. If it's journalistic objectivity you want, you've come to the wrong place.

You see, I've idolised Kim Deal since before my first encounter with a potty, especially since I met her on the 1st October 1990, when I was young, free, single and utterly in awe of the Pixies, and I was strolling up south Circular Road and she was strolling down South Circular Road and I didn't see her until she was five yards away and only just had time to wrench the words "Hi Kim" from my suddenly dry throat and she took a second out of her life to reply "Howya doin'?" to ME and later that evening she played a storming gig and managed to lift me out of the rather deep depression into which I had been recently lowered by a stunning blonde girl who probably doesn't know who she is if she's reading this and how could I not love her for that?

I also love her for 'Gigantic' and 'Tame' and 'Alec Eiffel' and 'Into the White' and now, with her almost identical twin Kelley and Jo Wiggs and Jim McPherson, for Last Splash. Pod was generally regarded as being little more than a piss-up on vinyl by a "supergroup for the cultural margins," two indie superstars with day jobs and too much free time. Now Tanya Donnely is gone and the Breeders is Kim Deal's day job and she has made an album so warm, so liberating, so exploding with a huge lust for life that it makes you glad the Pixies bit the dust.