The Breeders: Sobriety has helped the band focus.

Groovy chick rock stars have to come from someplace. Dayton, Ohio is as good a place as any.

Dayton-born twins Kim and Kelley Deal were among the coolest sex symbols of the post-Nirvana mid-1990s. After Kim Deal's seven-year stint in the Pixies — often considered the most important and influential rock band of the past 20 years — 1993 brought the Breeders huge commercial success that had somehow eluded the Pixies. It seemed like MTV was playing the video for the hit "Cannonball" every 15 minutes.

After a critically acclaimed Breeders 1990 debut album and 1992 EP, the platinum-selling 1993 sophomore Breeders album, Last Splash, quickly became one of that decade's more prominent classics. The third Breeders disc, Title TK, eventually surfaced in 2002, and the follow-up, Mountain Battles, was released a few weeks back. Kelley Deal, who was back home in Dayton for a quick break after the Breeders' European tour, spoke briefly via phone before heading out on the American tour dates. Kelley's musical collaborations with her sister Kim date back to the late '70s, and she described those early days.

"We were probably 16, 17 when we started playing in bars when the drinking age was 18," she recalls. "At the time, it was kind of a struggle because there weren't a lot of girls that played guitars and did rock. You know, they usually just shook a tambourine and sang backup for some Foreigner cover band. We actually did a lot of original songs and a few covers. But we did cool covers, like Blind Faith's "Can't Find My Way Home' and some Hank Williams, an Elvis Costello song, some Everly Brothers."

Stylistically, the sisters' early originals weren't necessarily along the lines of any particular artists they were covering. According to Deal, the only universally defining stylistic characteristic of that initial band was that "it was all over the map." And, really, if anything could accurately sum up the Breeders' own stylistic identity, "all over the map" is rather apt. Upon close examination, the Breeders' back catalogue compounds some rather stylistically schizophrenic music with some pretty damn weird, surreal lyrics.

"It's interesting that some people listen to this record and just shake their head and just don't understand why it doesn't sound like 'Cannonball,'" she says. "But if you listen to Last Splash and hear 'Roi' and 'Roi (Reprise)' — whatever that means — and "Drivin' on 9' and "Mad Lucas,' then I think you'd understand. Sometimes when people think this is off the path of what we've been doing, I think to myself, 'God, have they actually heard our records?'"

Mountain Battles is an overall slow and moody record with some rocking tracks thrown in for good measure. That makes Mountain Battles kind of the opposite of Last Splash, which was principally a rock record with a few interspersed oddball moody numbers. Mountain Battles opens with the rockingly fantastic "Overglazed," which repeats merely the lyrics "I can feel it" over and over, coming off like a Hüsker Dü "New Day Rising" for a new millennium.

After that, it's, well, "all over the map." There's the slow, shadowy Shangri-Las girl pop of songs like "Night of Joy" and "We're Gonna Rise." "Istanbul" combines exotic beatnik beats and ethereal guitar riffs with school-playground chants. The Pixies-flavored "Walk It Off" is ideal for dancing the Twist. A Spanish-language cover tune, "Regalame Esta Noche," is followed by the warm, dazzlingly effective old-time country harmonies of "Here No More." The disc closes with the minimalist title track that moves as slow as early Low. And who knows what on earth is going on with that "German Studies" track with struggled German-language vocals, but like the album overall, it's decidedly endearing stuff.

In spite of its extreme eclecticism, Mountain Battles is a particularly cohesive, unified work. Deal attributes that focus to her and her sister's shared recent sobriety. Kelley underwent drug rehab in the mid-1990s and Kim sought drug/alcohol treatment after the release of Title TK in late 2002.

"I do think a lot of the drug addiction thing is genetic, so I'm not surprised at all that both of us ended up in rehab," she admits.

Deal identified the most significant impact on the Breeders' creativity as both being clean and sober enough "that you actually sit down and do it and actually finish songs."

Deal considered the commonly made connection between drugs and the rock music scene to be overrated and exaggerated. "I was, like, a complete addict/alcoholic before I ever joined [the Breeders] and went on the road," she said. "I don't know who first said this but it's so true - at one point you're a musician with some drugs in the room, maybe some pot over there or beer in the fridge. But you're a musician doing music. And then something changes to, all of the sudden you're a drug addict with some musical gear in the room. So whatever happened on that particular journey, that's when you realize that drugs and alcohol really don't have that much to do with music, because if you're doing drugs like that, you just don't pick up a guitar and get anything done."

"Doing this record, a couple of times Kim was saying, "It's so weird, Kelley. The last time I was in a studio like this was like when I was doing the first couple of Pixies records.' Oh yeah, people smoked pot and drank and stuff like that, but you didn't do it in the studio," she says. "Studios cost money, and we were in the studio to get stuff done. It was kind of neat realizing the drugs and the music don't actually go together."

Mountain Battles is arguably the most experimental of the Breeders' career of musical exploration, but it also manages to be some of the group's most beautiful, engaging work. It gels much more effectively than Title TK, which had some nice cuts and was notable for taking the Breeders into new stylistic territories.

"Not to say anything negative about Title TK, but when I listen to the lyrics that Kim has written for this new record, they're just so stunning to me," Deal says. "If you've heard the lyrics to the song 'Mountain Battles,' oh my god! "I ride shotgun from the facility...' I mean, how cool is that? There is some beautiful stuff on Title TK — 'Off You' and stuff — but I think, consistently, the lyrics on every song on Mountain Battles are just amazing."

Deal paused, then laughed, "Okay, except maybe 'I Can Feel It.'"

The Breeders, The Montana Boys: 8 p.m. Tuesday, June 3 at House of Blues, 308 Euclid Ave., 216.241.5555. Tickets: $18-$20