This time, familiarity breeds contentment

Happy Deal sisters tour in support of band's first new album in six years

Kim (left) and Kelley Deal, shown during the Breeders' April 25 set at the Coachella festival in Indio, Calif., play a sold-out show at the Paradise Thursday. (Chris pizzello/associated press)

Kim and Kelley Deal are driving around their hometown of Dayton, Ohio, running errands. The twin sisters, who front the Breeders, are trying to squeeze everything from dog-washing to dry cleaning pickup to a phone interview into a break between touring obligations that will take them around the world. Judging by Kim's digressive, mile-a-minute delivery and Kelley's audible and excitable interjections from the driver's seat, all is hunky-dory in Deal-land.

The Deal sisters, who bring the Breeders to the Paradise Thursday for a sold-out show, are now years into their respective sobriety, getting along well, and excited about the first new Breeders album in six years, "Mountain Battles." "Yeah," says Kim contentedly, "everything's really good."

Which is welcome news for Breeders fans since "Battles" is only the fourth album in the band's complicated history. Begun in the late '80s by Kim and Tanya Donnelly as an outlet from their day jobs as bassist and guitarist in the influential bands the Pixies and the Throwing Muses, respectively, the Breeders worked fitfully over the years. Donnelly departed after the first record, Kelley joined up for the band's mid-'90s "Last Splash" heyday, rhythm sections came and went. And as both sisters struggled with substance abuse, they split off to form the separate bands the Amps and the Kelley Deal 6000. The lengthy wait this time stemmed from a confluence of factors including chief songwriter Kim's general lack of prolificacy, the twins' move back to Dayton to help care for their Alzheimer's-stricken mom, and the surprisingly lengthy Pixies reunion tour. With the Breeders rhythm section of bassist Mando Lopez and drummer Jose Medeles living in Los Angeles, the new record was done in fits and starts.

"It was nice that I would be doing something with the Pixies and then we would get together here in Dayton, and after them being here nine days, we would break again," says Kim, the younger sister by 11 minutes.

That approach worked well for "Battles," which is a riot of quirky-yet-accessible sounds as different from 2002's "Title TK" as that record was from its predecessor, 1993's "Last Splash."

In less than 40 minutes, "Mountain Battles" roams from Mexico (the hushed Spanish-language pop of "Regalame Esta Noche") to Berlin (the harmonious and bouncy "German Studies," sung in German) to the English-language "Istanbul." The sisters engage in their trademark warped harmonies - "perverse" is how Kim describes them - and generally make a racket that never obscures Kim's melodic sensibilities.

The economic running time was intentional: "Just because a CD can hold 70 minutes of music, do you think that's really a good idea?," asks Kim. The international bent was not: "Of course we didn't mean it. We're not international; I don't speak [expletive]!" she says with a hearty laugh.

The album also helped Kim break through a longstanding boundary. "This is actually the first record we've done 'oohs' all the way through a song, like we're the Spinners or something," she says of the cooing background vocals on songs like "We're Gonna Rise." "Honestly, I've always had a problem with it because [producer] Gil Norton, when I was in the Pixies, always wanted me to 'ooh' and it was like, 'Listen, I don't ooh,' " she says, imbuing the word with genuine contempt. But when she heard 4AD labelmates TV on the Radio work it out, she changed her tune. "It was like, 'Wow, man, if he can 'ooh' and still pull it off OK, maybe I've been too weird about 'oohs.' "

With her three bands, Kim has been a definitive cool rock-chick figure for more than 20 years. Befitting such longevity, a tribute album - featuring several Boston rock bands such as Francine - was released in mid-May on American Laundromat Records.

"Part of it was I always felt like Kim was a little underappreciated in the Pixies," says American Laundromat head Joe Spadaro of the inspiration for "Gigantic: A Tribute to Kim Deal." "I feel like she's so brave as a songwriter."

Sara Quin, half of fellow twin-sister duo Tegan and Sara and a longtime Pixies-Breeders fan, heartily concurs. "I'm always listening for something that sticks in my head and is credible, and I find her to be a haunting writer," says Quin, who was thrilled to meet the Deals earlier this spring at the Coachella music festival, where they proposed a twins-powered jam. "When I think of someone being a good songwriter, it's usually because their music stands up over the test of time, and I would definitely put her in that category."

Although flattered, Kim isn't rushing to claim any "godmother of alt-rock" trophy. "I'm not Catholic and the reason I feel like I have to say that is because I am the godmother to somebody, and I'm really bad at it. So I hope I'm not the godmother to anybody else."

Sarah Rodman can be reached at srodman@globe.com.