I’ve been a fan of Kim Deal ever since I first saw the video to “Monkey Gone to Heaven” by the Pixies — they were all doing the same gag, but she was the one really selling it, said my impressionable late teenage mind. On top of having a voice that sounds like only one other person in the world, she’s maintained a kind of integrity that I think is completely unique. It feels like she doesn’t care in the slightest about being a rock star, but cares a lot about music.
It’s something that seems to baffle a lot of people. I’ve seen multiple videos purporting to document The Breeders from formation through Last Splash and the years afterwards, or talking about the success of “Cannonball,” and the guys1Always guys, it’s worth pointing out making them just seem incapable of getting Deal’s work on its own merits. It’s always framed as a competition between The Breeders and the Pixies2Without mentioning Frank Black and the Catholics or his solo albums, which seem like a better comparison?, as if she’s incapable of ever escaping the looming shadow of Charles Thompson. And people can’t understand how a song as non-traditional as “Cannonball” became such a big hit, without dismissing it as a one-hit-wonder fluke of the 1990s.
I may be a little guilty of it, too, since when I heard that Kim Deal was releasing a solo album called Nobody Loves You More, I wondered why not just make another Breeders record? After hearing the two singles so far, “Coast,” and “Crystal Breath,” it’s obvious: this isn’t going to be a Breeders record.
Usually with a Breeders record, even when I can’t tell who’s singing what part, I can tell what each instrument is doing. It’s odd to hear Kim Deal songs with a ton of production around them, instead of two guitars, a bass, drums, and sometimes violin. “Coast” emphasizes horns — it initially reminded me a lot of Blondie’s cover of “The Tide is High” — to feel lazily tropical. “Crystal Breath” emphasizes the back beat, and it reminds me a little bit of St Vincent’s self-titled album.
The trick is that all the production is still in service of a Kim Deal song, and she is a master at coming up with hooks. In 2013, she released a bunch of disparate singles not collected into a single album, and “The Root” was my favorite. It’s pared back to nothing but guitars and drums (and a car’s back-up camera in a snowy parking lot, for the video), and it still gets stuck in my head.
“Cannonball” still baffles some music critics because it seems too weird to be popular. I think the truth is that it’s full of hooks, but they’re not in the expected places, and I think that’s a recurring trick of Deal’s. She could be cranking out catchy songs non-stop, but she seems to be more interested in making songs that are catchy enough to stick, but weird enough that they don’t just evaporate from memory the second they’re over. I still can’t say I’m a fan of Pod, but in the rest of The Breeders’ albums and her solo work, I think there’s a lot to be said for making music that challenges you to ignore it.
I get the sense that Nobody Loves You More is something like the opposite of all the “Unplugged” performances that bands were doing in the 1990s. Those were intended to show that the bands being given tons of money by record labels were actually talented musicians underneath all the noise and over-production. Kim Deal’s new album seems like it’ll show us what’s core to her music, whether it’s stripped down, or with guest musicians and a full suite of studio tricks.