Review: Kim Deal’s solo debut is familiar and different

When Pixies set out to make their 1988 debut studio album, they enlisted Steve Albini to engineer “Surfer Rosa,” the seminal alternative record which includes the enduring hit, “Where Is My Mind?” That experience was mutually beneficial to both parties — and was the beginning of a decades-long friendship between the prickly Albini and Kim Deal, the band’s bassist at the time.

Nearly 35 years later — and just before the acclaimed audio engineer died in May at age 61 — Deal turned to Albini once again for what would be their final collaboration, this time for another debut. Eight of the 11 tracks on Deal’s first solo studio album, “Nobody Loves You More,” were produced by both Albini and Deal — the ideal partnership of his experimentation and her musical skill.

Deal’s music has always been a reflection of both the rugged exterior needed to be a woman at the forefront of the ‘90s alternative rock scene as well as a tenderness that subverts the indifference often characterizing that same scene.

Those features, ostensibly at odds with one another, culminate in “Nobody Loves You More,” thanks to her poignant lyricism and the unique instrumentation woven throughout the record. At its heart, this is still a rock album — one that Deal is uniquely suited to make.

The album’s final track, “A Good Time Pushed,” musically and lyrically captures the fine line between doom and joy. “We’re having a good time,” she repeats, in what is perhaps an effort to convince herself that she is.

Although the continuity is there between this album and the music of Pixies and Deal’s band the Breeders, aspects of it are unequivocally distinct.

The resounding brass instruments on the title track and “Coast,” along with the orchestra featured on “Summerland,” are a departure from the traditional rock instrumentation that many listeners have come to associate with the 63-year-old.

As the album title suggests, much of the songs on “Nobody Loves You More” are also lyrically earnest and romantic. “Are you mine?/Are you my baby?/I have no mind/For nothin but love,” Deal croons on the doo-wop-inspired “Are You Mine?”

There are anomalies — like in the drum- and synth-heavy “Big Ben Beat,” which is evocative of rocker Kim Gordon’s electronic pivot in 2024′s “The Collective.” That one was produced only by Deal, not Albini.

As a whole, “Nobody Loves You More” is varied — and as distinctly American as the myriad locations which inspired it, from the Massachusetts island of Nantucket (the breezy sounds of “Coast”) to the Florida Keys (“Summerland”) to Deal’s hometown of Dayton, Ohio.

Fans of Pixies and the Breeders will find a lot to enjoy here — it is both familiar and different.

KRYSTA FAURIA, Associated Press

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