Kim Deal: The Real Deal

Kim grew up in Dayton with her parents, brother, and identical twin sister Kelley - hero of the aforementioned passport debacle, and lead guitarist of The Breeders from second album ‘Last Splash’ onwards. Later, she moved to Boston where she met her Pixies bandmates, but Kim still has a self-confessed complicated relationship with her “red state” home. “Sometimes I get a little jelly when I’m in California or New York,” she says, her accent lending every word a Midwest warmth. “The [everyday] people standing in line at grocery stores – most of them have left the country or met different types of people, you know? I guess the bigger cities have more of an influx of different cultures, and they celebrate [those] cultures instead of being like, ‘Can I see your naturalisation papers?’ or some fucking shit.”

But, she considers, that’s not to say that more conservative or suburban places can’t also inspire open-mindedness, even if not in a specifically political sense. “There is something about being isolated in your own world in a basement somewhere, trying to make something. It becomes so insular that when you step back and look, it’s like, ‘That’s fucking WEIRD’.” She grins: “There is something good about that, for sure.”

Indeed, it’s this relative dearth of opportunity or resources that first sewed the seed for Kim’s restless creativity. Because “there really weren’t a lot of people to play with in Dayton,” she and Kelley started gigging together, using a sound system that involved rigging up their shared PA (“a birthday present we could split”) with a frame made from their “grandaddy’s toilet seat” - DIY in every sense of the word. 

“I’m 17 with a guitar and I’ve written a song,” she begins, launching into the story with a customary lack of preamble before letting out a sudden yell. “‘KELLEY COME HERE! You sing this!’ We’re twins and we can harmonise and stuff, so obviously we’re gonna try and get gigs. Four sets. One night. At, you know, Joe’s Is A Fish House,” she says, pausing dramatically between each phrase as if she were announcing a Las Vegas residency rather than referencing a since-closed Dayton restaurant which, according to a quick Google search, offered ‘a one of a kind Sunday brunch that would knock your socks off’ in the early ‘80s.

“I remember doing [Breeders track] ‘Do You Love Me Now?’, and a couple of drunk dudes would say, ‘I just love that song’,” she recalls. “It was sweet. Because [performing] original songs wasn’t really a thing people did in Dayton. When I went to Boston, [and was part of] that whole scene, that was different for me. I was like, ‘Wow, you can play a full set of songs that nobody has ever heard, and nobody will get mad?!’”

Over the next twenty years, there were hiatuses, reunions, rehab stints and side projects, but it wasn’t until 2012 that Kim made her solo debut under her own name with ‘Walking With A Killer’ - the first A-side of what became a five-part series of 7” singles, released throughout 2013. Given her previous penchant for stage names – Mrs John Murphy with Pixies, and then Tammy Ampersand with The Amps – was there a significance to finally releasing as Kim Deal for the first time?

“Ah, it was the style at the time, wasn’t it – it was funny!” she says now of those nom de disques, breezing past the question in favour of a choice anecdote. “Because it didn’t matter if anyone knew your name; none of it mattered. I was married to John Murphy, and I was working in a doctor’s office in Boston. I answered the phone to a patient, and she said, ‘Hello, this is Ethel Rosenburg’ or something.” She pauses, bewildered, realising that the example name she’s just plucked out of the air in fact belongs to an American woman who was convicted and executed for Soviet Union espionage in the 1950s. “Oh my god,” she laughs, “did I just pick that name?” As if right on cue, a dog starts barking somewhere off camera, and Kim pleads: “Oh no baby, please don’t – I’m right in the middle of trying to clear something up, stop!

“Anyway,” she asserts. We’re back on track. “Ethel Goldberg rings the doctor’s office. And I go, ‘Okay, hold on a second Ethel’. And she says,” Kim’s voice assumes a haughty, offended air, “‘My name is not Ethel, my name is Mrs Robert Goldberg.’ She was trying to instil power in her identity by using her husband’s name! And I just thought that was so great. So, I was Mrs John Murphy. Then I got divorced so it wasn’t funny anymore!” She hoots with laughter. “If I was married again, maybe I would’ve used a different man’s name! Or a woman’s name! That would be funny.” She puts on that same imperious voice: “My name is MRS Linda… Smith.”

Collaboration hasn’t fallen by the wayside, either. Here her bulging little black book has been put to good use, with the album featuring contributions from Breeders bandmates past and present, as well as members of Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Savages, Teenage Fanclub, and The Raconteurs. The project also saw her reunite with Steve Albini - the legendary recording engineer with whom she’d worked on Pixies’ ‘Surfer Rosa’ and The Breeders’ ‘Pod’ and ‘All Nerve’, and who tragically died of a heart attack earlier this year.

Promoting and doing press around a release naturally involves revisiting memories of its recording: a process of reflection which, we suggest, must have been hard in the wake of Albini’s passing. “No,” Kim says quietly. “But only because I’m not thinking of him in past tense; he’s just in Chicago. And I know that’s not healthy. I did that with my parents too – I was waiting for it to wash over [me], but it always felt like they were just in another room.” She gives a small smile: “I’m a sociopath, I know.

“The weird thing is, I just thought this was about my loss, or [that of] his wife and all those people in Chicago. But it’s actually a lot bigger than that. He was over in France a week before he passed doing a workshop on tape recording, and his Japanese fans are always coming to his studio, and I know a whole subculture of Italian rock music because of his good friends in Italy.” Bearing witness to the impact and endurance that his work had – and remains to have – on people all over the world must be an incredibly special thing. “Mmm,” she assents. “He IS special. If I acknowledged his passing, I’d think about, like, what the last conversation we had was. But why would I need to do that?” She chuckles slightly. “He’s in Chicago.”

Love, loss, and the passage of time are themes writ large across ‘Nobody Loves You More’. Take ‘Summerland’, a track imbued with the melancholic glamour of old school Hollywood, inspired by family vacations in the Florida Keys and written on a ukulele that was a gift from Albini. Or lead single ‘Coast’, which reflects on the carelessness and exuberance of youth via warmly dynamic call-and-response horns courtesy of Chicago marching band Mucca Pazza. Two of its most powerful moments come from the poignant fragility of ‘Are You Mine?’ and ‘Wish I Was’ – a pair of semi-companion singles that were originally written in 2011 shortly after Pixies’ Lost Cities tour, and released as part of the 2013 series.

The former is a tender, heart-wrenching number; though possible to read in a romantic sense, it was in fact inspired by Kim’s mother, who asked her the titular question whilst living with Alzheimer’s. “Are you my baby? / I have no mind / For nothing but love,” Kim sings softly over sweeping strings, contemplating the experience of losing grasp on yourself yet retaining echoes of the emotion that makes you, you. “Standing strong / It makes me wish I was young,” goes the latter. “I might find deep regret / Waiting for me in the end.” Naturally, watching family members age can prompt a reflection on our own mortality; in many ways, it’s the closest we get to glimpsing the future. For her part, Kim returned to Dayton to help care for her mum and dad. We discuss how part of ageing’s unique cruelty is this forced role reversal: the child becomes the responsible one, and has to grieve losing them as a parent, as well as a person. 

“There’s supposed to be something like ‘nature’s cycle’. We have this life that we’ve built, and in our elder days, we sit comfortably in an old easy chair with our families visiting us, and we can think about the memories of our life to keep us warm,” she posits, adopting a woo-woo voice before dropping the affectation. “That’s all bullshit, okay. Seeing your parents grow old, it’s a weird thing. And I did a lot of that.” She laughs sadly. “It was this slooow process. It was watching everything they are – all the bravado, all of the strength and light and body – just drain [out of them]. It’s just like watching age take this strong tree down, you know? Year after year until,” her voice softens again, assuming that same saccharine tone, “until they’re sitting there in a room with their memories.” She pauses, just for a second. “But no, they don’t have any memories, ‘COS THEY HAVE ALZHEIMER’S, AND THEY’RE JUST SITTING THERE. So, anyway…”

Where many musicians of her ilk and era find themselves striving to recreate the glory days of their youth, Kim is an artist for whom the future holds as much interest as the past. Which is why, in an admirably egoless move, The Breeders supported Rodrigo on a run of shows during the latter’s huge ‘GUTS’ world tour. “Oh, it was a huge adventure,” Kim says of the experience now. “I had played Madison Square Garden before - Pixies opened for U2 there, so I know the assignment. As an opener, the assignment is to play a small set whilst everybody finds their seats. But I think [Rodrigo] was very happy that we said yes to doing it, because I think she’s said before that her life can be divided between ‘before she heard ‘Cannonball’’ and ‘after she heard ‘Cannonball’’.” Kim smiles: “Which I think is really quite cool.”

Given our society-wide obsession with youth, not to mention that women are frequently not given the same grace as men when it comes to ageing, there’s an inimitable cool and undeniable power to the way The Breeders perform these days. Four decades into her career and quite clearly still evolving, Kim is – and always has been – so much more than the ‘girl in a band’ that she and contemporaries like Elastica’s Justine Frischmann and Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon were reduced to.

“Sarah McLoughlin supposedly started Lilith Fair because she wasn’t being asked to go on festival [bills],” she says, reflecting on this era. “And that was true. Lists in Rolling Stone Magazine – up until very recently, even – would be by men, for men, listing different men. And there’s nothing wrong with that list. But I personally want to see a different list that includes some women, [and which is written] for people who are not just men. That’s what I’m interested in.

“Back in the day – why was [music] catered to men like that? Was it because there was no interest in women? Was it because there was no way to book the women? Was it because they had no actual support in the magazine in the first place, to garner any crowd to actually know they’re there to see? It’s circular, isn’t it. I’m not saying I don’t want guys to get a good audience, you know, but it is nice to see that now [bookers] are not just like…” she lowers her voice and says gruffly: “Oh but hey, there are some girls in the band too’.”

All too soon, we’re politely informed that we really do need to wrap this up – we’ve already overrun, and Kim is showing zero sign of slowing down (in conversation, in her career, in general). It may be her first solo album proper, but ‘Nobody Loves You More’ is far from a debut: rather, it’s an expansive encapsulation of an artist who has nothing left to prove.

‘Nobody Loves You More’ is out 22nd November via 4AD.

Tags: Features, In Deep, Interviews, Kim Deal