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. In a 1990 interview, Deal said the song related to something "like a pea pod flowering and then getting ripe and stinky", and connected it to the Surrealists' "associat[ing] women with fish". The writer Simon Reynolds described Deal's wolfish, staccato delivery of the repeated word "Oh!", as well as the "little gashes of gruelling, groiny feedback". 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. AllMusic's Heather Phares characterized the recording as "sensual" and said that it was more benign and friendly-sounding than the Pixies' work. "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. Wiggs co-wrote and played Spanish guitar on the final track, "Metal Man". The song contains harmonies between her and Deal; Wiggs' spoken vocals were compared by Stenger to those of the group Wire and by Reynolds to the vocal style of Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon. Aston likened the melody to the Pixies' "Cactus". Release Pod was released in the UK on May 29, 1990 by 4AD. Watts-Russell planned the date to be not too close to the release of the Pixies' Bossanova two and a half months later, for more effective publicity of both albums. Watts-Russell believed the album would be better suited to a US independent distribution label rather than the Pixies' American distributor Elektra, and licensed Pod to Rough Trade America. When this division of Rough Trade went bankrupt, Elektra assumed distribution of Pod in the US. Deal has noted that the Breeders did not receive any royalties from initial US sales because of Rough Trade's bankruptcy. 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