A decade and more in the making, Kim Deal’s first solo album under her own name more than repays the wait. Nobody Loves You More distils the cult American musician’s strengths – previously flexed in the Pixies and her own bands, the Breeders and the Amps – into a tight 11 tracks that span heartbreak, good times and strident guitars.
Fans may remember the poignant sucker-punch of Are You Mine? from long-ago 2013, a song that reflects the period when her mother’s Alzheimer’s led to Deal becoming her primary carer. A rueful, yearning cut, Wish I Was, dates from the same period, while LP closer A Good Time Pushed – whose take on fun errs towards ambivalence – wrapped recording in 2022.
Throughout, Deal’s authorial voice remains constant, her mellifluous pop often undercut by gnarlier interference. But there are late-career surprises – none finer than the strings arrangements that arrive on the pristine title track, or the horns that punctuate Coast. Deal has always had an audiophile’s obsession with detail and the spaces between instruments – a simpatico shared with the album’s chief engineer, the late Steve Albini. Big Ben Beat packs in dance beats, countermelodies, feedback and Deal’s uncanny knack for sounding down-to-earth and unpindownable at the same time.
