Glorious mess, or simply a mess? A bit of both, apparently. Not that head BreedstressKim Deal cares. She's banking on her rep, Steve Albini at the boards andmembers of Fear in her band.

Recorded in a sweet analogue-alcoholic haze over the past couple of years, the38-minute Title TK kicks off alarmingly enough. "Little Fury," "London"and "Off You" lurch and stammer along asthmatically and never reallymuster a complete gulp of oxygen-or a discernible groove. (The less saidabout Deal's Burroughsian style of lyrical non sequiturs the better; Kimand sister Kelley's tunefully skewed sandpaper/velvet vocals work far betteras sonic textures and not manifestos.) However, the middle third of the disc startsto weave its own subversive magic-the mantric Krautrock of "The She,"the focused grrrl-ly garage crunch of "Son of Three," the hypnotic minimalism(and groove!) of "Put On A Side," the shanty-ska punk of "FullOn Idle." After that there's another rope-a-dope session, but like atrue ninth-round contender, Kim saves her best "Cannonball" punch forlast with "Huffer," a glorious-and in no way messy-collisionof glammy Joan Jett vocals, rolling-surf Pixies basslines, and chugalugga-ramalamaRamones riffs. A-woooh-ah!

Still, our initial question nags. An informal poll of several national scribesyielded these comments:

"Mess." "A dull mess." "I assume it's glorious basedonly on the live show I saw a month or two ago!" "Neither. It'swhat they call in England 'a grower.' " "I really liked thespace they left in songs; like it was a car they stripped down to its axles andsteering wheel. But [there is] the other way of looking at it: they never builtthe chassis, they didn't finish and make it turn over."

There you have it folks. Five (or six) reviews of the new Breeders record, forthe price of one.