The progress of Kim Deal has been one of the great delights of modern music. Much as one wishes Pixies well, they have never been the same without her distinctive voice and presence, whereas her other band The Breeders have only gone from strength to strength – and she has clearly enjoyed the heck out of it, as recently shown on the Live at Big Sur video where the whole band radiate pleasure in playing. Oddly though, although she’s had a spattering of solo singles in the past decade or so, she’s never put her own name to an album until now, aged 63.
It could hardly have a better start. The opening title track is a really extraordinary mix of 70s MOR, all lush strings and horns, with the kind of perverse phrasing in both singing and songwriting that has always made Deal’s sound stand out a mile, all delivered with untold warmth. The vibe continues on the wonderfully weird “Coast” which mixes Mariachi horns, explicit nods to Pixies’ “Here Comes Your Man”, and again, lines that break in weird places, uncanny use of language and Deal’s voice in wonderful form.
Then it starts fracturing: there are fantastically experiemental indie rock-outs much closer to the classic Pixies / Breeders feel – the spiky “Crystal Breath”, the hypno-noise of “Big Ben Beat” (which feels like an epic even at under four minutes), the inspirationally cranky “Disobedience” and the dissociative miniature “Bats in the Afternoon Sky” stand out – which weave in and out of the more classic and benevolent-sounding songwriting. And it all works together, too – at first, at least. The only issue here is that after an astonishing start, it starts to meander, and ends with a bit of a fizzle in “A Good Time Pushed”. It’s almost, almost a classic, but it’s not yet her masterpiece. All the evidence suggests she’s someone happy to take her sweet time though, and there’s enough here to believe she’ll get there sooner rather than later.
Listen to "Nobody Loves You More":
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