Breeders return with the bright and the bleak

Twin sisters Kim (left) and Kelley Deal of the Breeders (shown in California in April) played new tunes and classic rave-ups at the Paradise Rock Club on Thursday. (CHRIS PIZZELLO/ASSOCIATED PRESS)

There was something about the fine, fuzzy splendor of it all Thursday night - the bleary guitars, off-kilter melodies, the sinister girl-group vocals - that made you feel as if the Breeders had never gone away.

Perhaps it only seemed that way because singer-guitarist Kim Deal had spent the better part of the past few years at her day job - that is, playing bass with the Pixies - and touring the world. Then again, maybe it had something to do with the fact that the Breeders' new album, "Mountain Battles," sounds so seamlessly connected to the band's 2002 effort, "Title TK," which in turn had sounded seamlessly connected to 1993's "Last Splash."

Whatever the reason, the once infamously embattled Deal twins - Kim and her guitar-playing sister Kelley - seemed to feel the same way. During a rivetingly good, sold-out show at the Paradise Rock Club, the shape-shifting lineup (rounded out these days by bassist Mando Lopez and drummer Jose Medeles) ran through a catalog that, while only four albums deep, stretched back to indie rock's early-'90s heyday.

In fact, the band opened with "Tipp City," a bleary bit of goodness that wasn't a Breeders tune at all, but rather came from Kim Deal's short-lived other side project, the Amps. Indeed, it was a night of mixing up the medicines, as the band toggled between new numbers such as the stripped-down, beat-heavy "Bang On" and classic rave-ups like "Cannonball" and "Divine Hammer." The group's take on the Beatles' "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" was a treat, as was a brisk cover of Guided By Voices's "Shocker in Gloomtown," a nice nod to the Breeders' Dayton, Ohio, brethren and onetime collaborators.

Throughout the set, Kelley and Kim Deal's guitars jousted, jostled, and tumbled together like perfectly matched siblings. But it was their eerily matching harmony vocals that truly underscored the band's unique contrast of the bright and the bleak. Set against the low rumble of their guitars and punchy tales of lost love and abandonment, the Deals' cooing, still-girlish voices conjured a world where fun in the sun was often quickly supplanted by dark shadows and even darker, more ominous melodies.

With bandanas and beards, the Montana Boys looked like they might have opened for the Marshall Tucker Band. Looks can be deceiving. The quintet delivered an intriguing set of quirky indie rock that owed much to Television (yelping Tom Verlaine-esuqe vocals? Check. Angular guitar solos? Check.) and plain old television, with songs dedicated to small-screen icons like Tony Danza and "Doogie Howser."