Just when music threatens to disappear up Kylie's pert backside, the Breeders return. It is nine years since their last album, Last Splash, and those have been tangled years for Kim and Kelley Deal, the twin sisters who front the band. Kelley has been in rehab, while her sister used the time to wander from city to city, learning the drums and finding a whole new line-up for The Breeders. For those to whom the Deal sisters, and the music they made in the past, are icons of how rock should be, and how women might be wild and majestic within it, this was always going to be an affectionate night. There is a genuine warmth in the room, especially for the return of Kelley (she's given a bracelet by someone in the crowd; between songs, she fiddles with it, trying to do it up), but what the night turns into is much more than nostalgia.
The new line-up gives the band a powerful rhythmic core, holding together Kim and Kelley's input rather than being merely in its shadow. Material from the new album, Title TK, holds its own with the best of their back catalogue, so that highlights include the smoky, smudged beauty of Off You, the recent single, as well as Cannonball, their biggest hit - a powerhouse of sound and lyrical fury that rains down on the small venue.
It is a dishevelled performance in a way that deconstructs all the slick gloss of much rock and pop. Both women have emphatically dressed down for the occasion; Kim's hair is a mess and she smokes between (and during) all the songs. Their banter with each other and the crowd borders on the goofy: "Hands up who watches stupid daytime television?" says Kelley, putting her own hand up, and there's a long, messy interlude while drums are set up for Kim to play on just one track, The She.
The set ends just as messily. After a lush, life-affirming version of Divine Hammer, the band wander off stage in dribs and drabs, straggling back on to perform the wistful and wasted Forced to Drive, a new song that is milky, distracted and decidedly on the edge. After that, the rest of the band retreat but Kim Deal doesn't want to go. She climbs out into the crowd, handing out drumsticks like sweeties, then gets down to hug fans, shake their hands. She's smaller than most of them and almost gets lost in the crowd, but you can see her smile. It's a rare, precious and otherworldly moment.
At the Astoria, London WC2 (020-7734 8932), tomorrow.
