Photo by Kristin Sollecito
Is there anyone cooler than Kim Deal? The answer is no. From the Pixies to the Breeders and the Amps, her legend looms large in the last three decades of rock music, equally as inspirational to underground musicians as Disney pop stars. With such a legacy, the 63-year-old could easily have rested on her laurels and done nothing, or toured forever on the back of 1993’s unassailable classic Last Splash. Instead she has instead chosen to release a record under her own name for the first time. Unsurprisingly, it’s great.
Nobody Loves You More yet one more high point in a flawless discography and one of the best records of 2024. While it does feature some eccentric instrumental choices (trumpet and ukelele and string arrangements) and more than a few torch songs with straightforward (for Deal, anyway) lyrics that will 100% bum you out with their wistful melancholy, Nobody Loves You More also a celebratory record. This is partially because Deal made it with all her friends—think members from various iterations of the Breeders, Teenage Fanclub, various Midwestern music heads, Steve Albini, of course. These are, it should go without saying, all people she knows from having knocked around the music scene for decades.
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD), Cassette, 2 x Vinyl LP
In fact, Deal has been an icon for so long, it’s easy to overlook that at the end of the day she, too, is a Midwest punk who records herself, puts out her own records, and has drama with her bandmates that necessitates starting weird side projects—and Nobody Loves You More would not exist if it weren’t for all of that. Below, Deal talks about going solo without actually going solo, the orchestrated sound of Nobody Loves You More, and her cure for “demo-itis.â€
You’ve always been a band person and I know some of these songs started out a self-released 7-inch series, which is very cool. How did that happen?
The first thing that the Pixies did was this cassette that we did in one weekend, and you would put it out on consignment. We would go to Newbury Records, and they would say, ‘Yeah, we’ll take some of those.’ And they would try to sell them. If somebody bought it—if 5 people bought it in the whole city of Boston—it was like, Oh my god!
Even the Breeders. We had a Breeders fan club called the Breeders Digest in like 1992 and we put out a 7-inch—we didn’t even ask the label, we just put out Head to Toe as a giveaway to the Breeders Digest. You would fill in the card and get mailed the 7-inch, so you’d have a little copy of the Breeders Digest and the 7-inch that goes with it. And then I did another 7-inch, Climbing the Sun. Or was that Forced to Drive? I think it was Forced to Drive.
So I’ve done 7-inches before and I had a couple of songs that were in different stages. Because remember, in 2011 I went out to L.A. to work with some people because my friendship with Jim McPherson was broken after some shenanigans with the Amps. I was drinking heavy, he was drinking heavy. I came downstairs to my basement and his drum set was gone. Like good alcoholics, we never talked about it. I never called him to ask if he was mad. I just looked at it and went, oh fuck. I did something bad. I don’t know what it was and he doesn’t know but, we never talked to each other again.
Then in 2011, sitting in Ohio, there’s nobody to play with. So I went out to L.A. and it’s like, this song is sounding good, and I have this other song that I think will be great. I just did it in a cellar—there was a really good sounding cellar there. I had a Tascam 16-Track. It was one-inch tape. I recorded us in the cellar. Is it an album? I don’t know, but it sounds good. Then I’ve got a couple others that are sounding good, but I don’t have the words finished, so I’m just gradually working on them until there’s 10 that are released and done all together. So I have done stuff on my own. The Amps record was basically a solo record.
But you gave it a band name.
Yeah, I did, because I liked bands and I didn’t have a band. My band wasn’t talking to me. One of the best things that happened was in 2011 or 2012, I was back on the couch talking to Kelley in Dayton. She goes, You know, next year is 2013 and that’s the Last Splash 20th Anniversary. We should do some shows together with Josephine and Jim.’ And I’m like, I’ll call Josephine, you call Jim—and she did it. It was the best thing. He lives nearby. We go have pizza together. I know his grandkids. It’s been a wonderful thing.
I’ve listened to your new record a couple of times and it definitely has a sense of melancholy to it. I think a lot of that comes through because it’s very orchestrated. There’s a lot of strings. What led you to make those choices for these songs in particular?
I have been hearing strings forever when I play songs. Just in general, if I’m playing the song, I hear things. I don’t just hear my voice and my guitar in the room. There’s all sorts of things happening. With “Nobody Loves You More,†I just started building the bridge, and I thought it would be so cool to have this, like, leading man playing the trumpet. It sounds like Playboy After Dark. Are you old enough to know Playboy After Dark at all?
No, I don’t. When was that on, in the 70s?
It was on in black and white and then it got color. Everyone smoked and it was like Sammy Davis Jr. and lounge lizard, it definitely had that vibe. And also a Bond vibe, John Barry doing “Goldfinger.†Those horns blasting those staccato notes, you know, with a stiletto on the screen—dangerous and sexy. I heard it in my head and I was able to get somebody who played a trumpet [Jim McBride] in Cincinnati. Somebody introduced me. He came in. He just killed it.
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Who was it?
It was a friend of a friend. The guy who records us, he’s Kelly’s partner in R. Ring. His name is Mike Montgomery and he has an analog studio. The Breeders did All Nerve at his studio. He lives in Kentucky. It’s fucking an hour way. Jack Lawrence and Britt Walford came up, both from Kentucky. Well, Jack’s people were from Kentucky but I think he lives in Nashville now—but they both came up and recorded the rhythm track. I did some vocals there. And I’m like, do you know a trumpet player? [Montgomery] goes, Yeah, I do. Then the next session, there’s the trumpet player. And he just killed it.
Then the strings got recorded at [Steve] Albini’s in a different session. On “Summerland,†I’m playing a ukulele, and I only have it because Steve Albini gave it to me. I didn’t play it for years because what the fuck am I going to do with the ukulele? It was a gift for doing his wedding music. Finally, I just picked it up and I started playing something. And in my mind, when I’m playing the song and it gets to the chorus, and I’m going [sings the string part]—I can’t even sing all the parts that are coming in at one time. But I was like, you know, I think I can figure this out. So I did it on a keyboard first, and I figured out the part. Then the string arranger [Susan Voelz] is somebody, of course, that Steve Albini introduced me to from Poi God Pondering, a band. She plays violin in it.
It’s like you don’t have a “band,†but you have all your friends that come and play with you in different studios and different places.
Yeah, it is cool! Like, the first drummer of the Breeders [Britt Walford] and then the last drummer [Jim McPherson] with Last Splash and All Nerve. And then Mando [Lopez] who played bass on Title TK and Mountain Battles. And then Steve’s recording, and Kelley’s partner is recording it all. It was really great.
When you were recording these songs, were you like, ‘I’m going to make this a solo record.’ Or are you just always kind of recording music?
I’m always recording stuff. When I recorded “Nobody Loves You More,†the trumpet was on it and I had the part, but I thought, I don’t want this to be a 7-inch. I want this to be on a real record. And the stuff I did out in LA was—okay, listen. I had a 388 machine, it’s consumer grade, it’s a [Tascam 388]. It’s a quarter-inch, it’s a big fucking four-track, is what it is. So I lost track number eight and that was where the guitar was. You can hear the ghost of the guitar on the other tracks. It’s just a bit of a shoddy recording. It’s a 7-inch, right? But I knew “Nobody Loves You More†could be a better recording, and I wanted to do it again. So I got the same players, and they recorded at Mike’s studio in Kentucky, and I was able to do it for real in a professional way. Because I’m not gonna just leave it like tracks ain’t got lost. Like, oh well, that’s the definitive recording. It should never get any better.
Some people are like that, though. They’re like, “First track, best track, and we’re never playing it again.â€
That is demo-itis. I used to get it all the time. Now when I get demo-itis I just think, Okay, [slow exhale], I have demo-itis. I’m going to record this again, and one day I will look back at the demo and say, God, that sounds like shit, it sounds way better now.’
Except for you know what? That’s not true, because “Wish I Was†is the first rehearsal of that song that I got on digital, because it was just rehearsing. Who cares? That’s what’s on the record. I tried to make it sound better, and I never thought it sounded as groovy as when me and Mando were playing. So demo-itis is a thing, I suppose.
You’ve been making music for many decades. At this point, if you were to go out and play a solo show just as yourself, would you feel nervous?
I would, yeah. I’ve been dealing with this a lot, okay, because that question that you just asked me, okay, so this says, Kim, do you want it? Okay? So naturally, I’m an, I’m a solo performer, right? It says: Kim Deal. I’ll bring my guitar and I’ll play you these songs. But it doesn’t happen like that because, okay, like Jim Croce orJames Taylor—these people who have guitars and they play their song from the beginning to the end. My song has a big trumpet section on the bridge. And if that doesn’t happen, it just sounds like, “Hey.†Everybody is enjoying it in my head, though.
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD), Cassette, 2 x Vinyl LP
Are you going to tour for this?
The first thing we’re gonna do is Barbican. Have you been there? It’s a fancy venue in London. It has a musical director that you can ask for more orchestration for the event. So we’ve been working on how we can maybe do the strings for “Summerland†and make them sound really good.
Will you be playing guitar up there? Or will you be like, you know, in an evening gown, singing torch songs?
Maybe I should wear a mother fucking gown! You dare me? I’d be so uncomfortable, man, it would be so weird.
Is there anything in particular about this record that you’re super proud of, that’s like, different maybe than other records you’ve put out in the past. Like, you can say with this one, like, I really tried something, or I challenged myself, or I just really hope this happened.
I think it was the work I did with Albini. When we went up [to Chicago] and did the strings for “Summerlandâ€â€”because everybody knows him as his punk rocker guy. He can just record like 18 songs in three days with the three-piece down the street. That’s what everybody knows. But the fact that he’s such an elegant professional engineer—not only is everything in his studio on point and working to the level that it should be, but nobody’s harried. Everything’s prepared. All the headphones work. You know, all dozen headphone boxes, none of them have a crackly sound. “This isn’t working!†None of that bullshit. It was so pretty, so elegant, but it was funny because we walked in after the first version of all the strings and we’re looking around going, ‘This sounds really good.’ And then Albini goes, ‘So we’re done, right?’ And it’s like, you know, Albini. It’s like, ‘You like those first five versions, band, you want to do another seven more?’ ‘Yeah, let’s do seven more.’ Ah ah! Because that’s me. That’s who he’s talking about in my mind. When he’s talking about people who do five versions of something and then they want to do another four because they think all five sound good. Yeah—that’s me.
Nobody Loves You More is available on cassette exclusively on Bandcamp.
