Kim Deal comes to Boston with a personal, vulnerable solo album
'It was so sweet to me, such a great moment to live in. Also a horrible lot of pathos there.'
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Once you know the backstory, it's pretty clear what the song is about: 'Let me go/ Where there's no/ Memory of you/ Where everything is safe/ And nothing is true.'
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But Deal specializes in a kind of surrealistic songwriting style. 'I know you, little libertine,' she sang on 'Cannonball,' the Breeders song that the Village Voice (among other outlets) named the best song of 1993. 'I know you're a real cuckoo.'
That indelible hit helped introduce Deal's wry rock songs to a new generation when Olivia Rodrigo hand-picked the Breeders to open some dates on the young star's 2024 arena tour.
To Deal, her songs are transparent, almost to the point of embarrassment.
'Sometimes I cringe because I feel so vulnerable,' she said. 'I'm exposing so much.'
But she does admit that listeners may not hear them that way. When she recorded the vocal for 'Skinhead #2,' a song from the Breeders' fifth and most recent album, 'All Nerve' (2018), she tried to explain its intent to her twin sister, Kelley, and engineer Steve Albini.
'I said, 'You know what I'm saying here?' and they both said, 'I don't care,'' she recalled with a laugh.
''But the lyric is pretty cool…'
''Don't care!''
Some of the songs on the new album, 'Nobody Loves You More,' date back over a decade ago. Then
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Albini, a longtime friend and collaborator, worked with Deal on the last song on the album, 'A Good Time Pushed,' shortly before his
Albini, a famously uncompromising presence in the studio, worked with Nirvana, PJ Harvey, and many lesser-known bands over a 40-year career. One of his earliest notable credits as a producer came on the Pixies' debut album, 'Surfer Rosa' (1988).
He was effusive in his praise for Deal, once calling her
Without planning it, Deal said, her new album amounts to a fond farewell to him as much as to her mother.
'It turns out it's a tribute,
because he [bleeping] died
,' she said.
If Deal epitomizes a certain kind of brassy composure onstage, she has a theory about where that comes from. Though she and Kelley were born and raised in Dayton, their family roots trace to Appalachia.
'All my family – cousins, grandparents, grand-uncle, aunts – they're all from West Virginia,' Deal said.
'There's definitely a singing style out of Appalachia that I love.' Take, for instance, the Carter Family, the 'first family of country music.'
'They were so cool, so exciting to me,' she said. 'I love that music. They're jamming their asses off, with no body movement. Nobody's rocking, no swaying. A pure voice, harmonizing with another pure voice. It doesn't have vibrato or anything. I think it's otherworldly and ghostly.'
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Singer/guitarist Kim Deal performs with The Breeders at House of Blues in 2023. (Ben Stas for The Boston Globe)
Ben Stas for The Boston Globe
The Breeders originally formed as a side project featuring Deal and Tanya Donelly of Throwing Muses, with Carrie Bradley of the late, lamented Ed's Redeeming Qualities on violin. For their first show at the Rat, they were billed as 'Boston Girl Super-Group.' The Breeders became a fulltime band after Deal convinced her sister to learn guitar and recruited a British friend, Josephine Wiggs.
For her solo songs, she's touring with an entirely different cast, including bassist Mando Lopez, drummer Lindsay Glover, and guitarist Rob Bochnik.
While the Breeders have proven to be much more than just a diversion from the Pixies, at 63, Deal may be embarking on another new chapter in her rock 'n roll life. Not, she insists, that she has wasted too much time thinking about it.
'I think a lot of people do have an expectation of what they 'deserve,' how things 'should be,'' she said. 'I have none. I have zero plans, no five-year plan. If nobody wants to listen to it, nobody has to listen to it.'
Then she concluded with a good-natured pronouncement, which began with four fitting words: 'I don't give a…'
KIM DEAL
With Ratboys. Monday, March 10: 7 p.m. doors, show at 8 p.m. $60-75. The Wilbur, 246 Tremont St., Boston.
James Sullivan can be reached at
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