The Breeders formed in 1988 when Deal, bass player for Pixies, befriended Donelly of Throwing Muses during a European tour. They recorded a country-infused demo in 1989, leading to 4AD co-founder Ivo Watts-Russell funding an album, Pod, recorded that year at the Palladium studio in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Due in part to Deal's work with the Pixies, the album was widely anticipated, particularly in Europe. It became a critical and popular success, reaching number 22 in the UK. Critics praised its dark, sexualized lyrics, and compared it favorably to the Pixies. The cover art was designed by Vaughan Oliver and portrays a man performing a fertility dance while wearing a belt of eels.
Back in 1988, Kim Deal of the Pixies became friends with Tanya Donelly of Throwing Muses when their respective bands undertook a joint tour of Europe. Deal and Donelly spent time together playing guitar, drinking beer, and sharing musical ideas. They often went clubbing together in the bands' hometown of Boston. While attending a Sugarcubes concert, the two drunkenly decided to write and record dance songs. Their first attempt to work together was based around the idea of an "organic dance band" consisting of Deal on bass, Donelly on guitar, and two drummers. They recorded Donelly's "Rise" with Throwing Muses' David Narcizo, and planned more originals, as well as a cover of Rufus and Chaka Khan's "Tell Me Something Good".
A year and a half passed without the pair recording new material. During this time, they decided their attempt at dance music was not working, and resolved to repurpose their songs for a different genre. Deal became more serious about her work with Donnelly when the Pixies' Black Francis announced he was undertaking a solo tour. She decided that if he could be active outside of the Pixies, then she could too.
Journalists have speculated that Deal felt motivated to start a new band because of her diminishing role and lack of creative input in the Pixies, which Deal has often denied. However, in one interview she complained angrily about Francis singing lead vocals in almost all of the band's songs and said that if she could not sing more in the Pixies, she would sing in another band instead. Pixies' guitarist Joey Santiago later recalled that Deal had a strong desire to contribute songs to the group to express her creativity, but eventually resigned herself and begrudgingly accepted Francis as the band's sole singer and songwriter. According to Francis, Deal had once offered several new songs to the group that were not accepted because they sounded too different from the band's repertoire; in Santiago's view, Francis’ own rejection of the songs reflected his attitude that the group "made pizzas, not cookies". Francis admitted in the mid-1990s to not especially liking Deal's non-Pixies music, due to "personal taste".
Because the Pixies and Throwing Muses were signed to different American record labels, Deal and Donelly could not both be principal songwriters for their joint project. They focused on Deal's compositions for what would become Pod, intending to use Donelly's songs for a subsequent album. After Pod's release, Deal and Donelly recorded a demo of the latter's songs in preparation for the Breeders' second album. Donelly left the group in 1991, and used her compositions for her new band, Belly. Before parting, she contributed guitar and vocals to the Breeders' 1992 Safari EP,
In 1989 the pair recorded a country music-influenced demo with violinist Carrie Bradley and bassist Ray Holiday. Paul Kolderie engineered several of the songs, but Deal found his production "too clean" and employed Joe Harvard of Fort Apache Studios to remix. Deal called the project "the Breeders", a name she and her sister Kelley had used when performing as teenagers. The name comes from a slang term used in the LGBT community to refer to straight people, which Kim found amusin, Ivo Watts-Russell, co-founder of the Pixies' and Throwing Muses' UK label 4AD, was enthusiastic about the demo and Deal's potential as a songwriter, and gave the band an advance of $11,000 to record an album.
Although Deal played bass with the Pixies, she changed to guitar for the Breeders, finding it an easier instrument to manage while singing, and so recruited Josephine Wiggs of the Perfect Disaster on bass. Deal asked Steve Albini, who had worked on the Pixies' Surfer Rosa, to engineer the album. Deal thought it would be fun to form an all-female band, "[like] the Bangles from Hell". She wanted Kelley to be the Breeders' drummer, but Kelley could not get time away from her job as a program analyst. As an alternative, Albini suggested they try Slint's Britt Walford, who used the pseudonym Shannon Doughton for Pod because he did not want his contribution to the album to overshadow his role in Slint. Deal, Wiggs, and Walford rehearsed for a week at Wiggs' house in Bedfordshire, England, before joining Donelly in London for further rehearsals.
Pod was recorded in January 1990 at Palladium studio, in Edinburgh, Scotland, which had recording equipment on the first floor and bedrooms upstairs. During the sessions, the band sometimes wore pajamas, and more than once went to a local pub without changing. Although 4AD booked the studio for two weeks, the band completed their recording in a single week. To use the remaining time, the label hired a television crew to film a music video, and the band recorded a session for John Peel's show on BBC Radio 1.
Pod has sparse instrumentation. likening the album to the Pixies for its threatening melodies and loud, resounding guitars, angular melodies, shattered tempos and screeching dynamics", but felt the album nonetheless had its own identity distinct from Deal's previous band. Other writers have noted the album's sinister, sexual and youthful feel. Albini said that "there was a simultaneous charm to Kim's presentation to her music that's both childlike and giddy and also completely mature and kind of dirty ... [it had a] sort of girlish fascination with things that were pretty but it was also kind of horny. That was a juxtaposition that, at the time, was unusual. You didn't get a lot of knowing winks from female artists at the time."
The track "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" is likewise representative of the entire album, in the song's "bipolar" extremes from "disarmingly gorgeous" to "punishingly gritty and violent". Deal has said that many of the songs are sexual in nature.The slow-paced opening track "Glorious" describes an adult who has vague but pleasant memories of being molested as a child by an aunt. It and the next song, "Doe", were co-written by Ray Halliday and concerns a schizophrenic teenage couple losing their grip of reality after taking Thorazine; in a delusional state they plan to burn down their town. Deal has said that "Hellbound" described a fetus that survives an abortion, and that the song is "kinda like a heavy metal hymnal, 'We're all hellbound.'" She cited the line "It lives, despite the knives internal" as containing the most embarrassing lyrics she has written. About "When I Was a Painter", the next track, Lamacq was struck by Deal's gruff vocals and praised its stop-start guitar riff.
"Fortunately Gone", was an appealing pop-flavored opening for the album's second half. Deal had originally practiced the song with Kelley several years previously. The lyrics concern a woman who has died but continues to obsessively watch over her lover, not able to give him up, even after death."Iris" was interpreted by Larkin and critic Wif Stenger as being about menstruation. A recurring sexual dream of Walford's inspired the lyrics of "Opened". The track features a buoyant rhythm and was described by Stenger as exhilaratingly bringing the listener somewhere between reality and the supernatural. "Only in 3s", which Deal wrote with Donelly, is about a ménage à trois sexual relationship. "Lime House" was described in a Billboard review as feeling "avant-garage".The song concerns Sherlock Holmes spending long and comfortable hours in an opium den. The song contains harmonies between her and Deal
The album was widely anticipated by the British music press due to the involvement of Deal and Donelly—known from their highly regarded work with the Pixies and Throwing Muses, respectively—and Albini, who likewise had a strong reputation for his previous engineering work. It reached number 22 in the UK, where it was promoted by a full-page ad in Melody Maker, and number 73 in the Netherlands. Pod sold moderately well, although Deal has noted it "never sold anything" compared to their next album, Last Splash (1993), which was certified platinum in the US and silver in the UK.
