After three decades of being bent and beaten with divine art rock hammers, Kim Deal’s delightfully fragile songwriting deserved some pampering. Long-gestating and coloured lyrically darker by the deaths of her parents during its making, Deal’s first proper solo album finds her wrapped in ballroom strings, slick brass and soft-focus textures. “Let me go where there’s no memory of you, where everything is new,” Deal sings over lustrous blue bayou guitars on “Are You Mine?”, one of music’s most poignant depictions of Alzheimer’s. This is no flapping palm frond of a record, however.
Plenty of room is found for the former Pixie and Breeder’s trademark grunge pop, alongside forays into electro rock, slowcore, crank ambience and, on “Big Ben Beat”, the invention of shoe metal. The collection of 11 songs is the Dayton, Ohio resident’s first full-length album under her own name.
“Nobody Loves You More” is Kim Deal’s album although it’s not the first time she has gone solo – she self-released a five-part, ten-song seven-inch vinyl series in 2013. In keeping with Deal’s meticulous approach to her art, the album was refined over several years. Its oldest songs, ‘Are You Mine?’ and ‘Wish I Was’, were written and originally recorded in 2011 shortly after Deal came off the Pixies’ “Lost Cities Tour” and relocated to Los Angeles (early versions of those songs were included in said vinyl series); the last recording for “Nobody Loves You More” took place in November 2022 with legendary engineer and close friend Steve Albini, who helmed final track ‘A Good Time Pushed’ at his Electrical Audio studio in Chicago.
Along the way she has brought in a variety of collaborators from Breeders past and present (Mando Lopez, twin sister Kelley Deal, Jim Macpherson, Britt Walford), to Raymond McGinley (Teenage Fanclub), Jack Lawrence (Raconteurs) and Savages’ Fay Milton and Ayse Hassan. “Nobody Loves You More” was mixed by Marta Salogni and mastered by Heba Kadry.
Every song has a story behind it, from the winter vacations with her parents in Florida Keys (‘Summerland’), wedding band covers of ‘Margaritaville’ (‘Coast’) to her mother’s dementia (‘Are You Mine?’). All in all, the record is a celebration of Deal’s unmatched artistry, nodding not only to her career highlights with celebrated bands across the alternative landscape (Pixies, The Amps, The Breeders), but also to her immovable cultural weight influencing musicians like Kurt Cobain and Olivia Rodrigo through the generations.
The Fat Angel Sings 