Kim Deal
Nobody Loves You More
4AD
ABOVE THE CURRENT
When news broke in late August that Kim Deal was going to release her debut solo album, those who’ve followed her career over the past four decades took it with a grain of salt. After all, when she formed The Breeders after Pixies frontman Frank Black unceremoniously booted her from that band, Deal wrote all but a few songs on each of the new project’s releases by herself. Moreover, The Breeders’ lineup changes resembled a turnstile spinning at a hundred miles an hour—even Kelley Deal, Kim’s sister and the second longest serving member of the band, took a few years-long breaks. A similar assessment applied to Kim’s other notable project, The Amps, which put out a single killer record in 1995 which, like the Breeders albums, was written almost entirely by Deal.
The pride of Dayton, Ohio (apologies to runner-up Bob Pollard) takes songwriting matters even more into her own hands with Nobody Loves You More. Accordingly, one would likely assume the record to be a facsimile of a Breeders or Amps LP, or would at least resemble the sound of Deal’s other projects—the distorted guitars (which, to be accurate, heavily populate album closer “A Good Time Pushed”), the fuzzy production quality, the wafting and effervescent aesthetics with which she’s synonymous. But Deal’s penchant for pranks, which she dallied with in her younger years, is still very much intact. With her sunny but suspect smile, she’s made an ass of longtime listeners and anyone who dared to question her skills as a composer.
Even with a record that lo-fi warlock Steve Albini helped engineer before his passing earlier this year, Nobody Loves You More is the antithesis of every record onto which Deal stamped her name. The production quality is pristine; distortion is kept to a minimum; no fewer than 20 other musicians not only enrich the album’s 11 songs, but make them downright enchanting by incorporating brass, pedal steel, drum programming (“Big Ben Beat”), and even a string section (“Summerland”) across the record. In fact, whereas Deal’s crunchy guitar playing and heavenly voice used to be her formula, she’s all but abandoned it in favor of florid arrangements that majestically and appropriately frame a far more sensitive side of Deal that we haven’t previously witnessed. Call it a sign of the times: Her irony-laden, tongue-in-cheek, and even sarcastic persona that she adopted with The Breeders is dead; long live tenderness, sincerity, and warmheartedness.
Along those same lines, we’ve never heard Deal open up so much about herself, whether it be embracing love as a way of seeking absolution (“Wish I Was”), connecting with and finding solace in nature (“Summerland”), or taking action against climate change instead of bemoaning or ignoring the calamity (“Disobedience”). For the most part, the songs Deal wrote for The Breeders and The Amps rarely delved into her psyche, focusing instead on esoteric, amusing, and ultimately neutral topics. Whether it was her intention or not, such innocuous lyrics rarely gave insights into Kim Deal as a person—a technique that shy musicians like Deal often employ to deflect attention from themselves, even if they’re performing in public on a stage.
We’ve waited a very long time to get to know the real Deal, and it turns out she’s humble, taciturn, averse to too much attention, and has a tremendous amount of personal fortitude and strength. For her to summon the courage to put her true self on display after so many years makes Nobody Loves You More more than just another Kim Deal record—it’s a testimonial, and those who listen to the album from start to finish will be all the better for it. No doubt, Deal is, too.
