Kim Deal - Nobody Loves You More

So iconic an indie rock figure is Kim Deal in her own right that it feels like some trick of the mind that this, at the age of 63, is her first full-length solo record. She threw herself whole-heartedly into bringing back The Breeders after her departure from the Pixies’ fold a decade ago, and the Dayton band’s comeback record, ‘All Nerve’, suggested her songwriting chops had not abandoned her. ‘Nobody Loves You More’, though, feels like a different beast entirely; ambitious and stylistically varied, it demonstrates new sides to Kim both musically and thematically. The title track opens the record with a triumphant blend of horns and strings that suggest nothing was off the table for her when approaching these songs. 

Sure enough, she finds room here for styles both classic - there’s slide-guitar doo-wop on ‘Are You Mine’, jazzy impressionism on ‘Summerland’ - and contemporary; ‘Crystal Mind’ is dark dance-punk, while closer ‘A Good Time Pushed’ might be the closest thing on the record to the breeziness of The Breeders. This is a diffuse set of tracks, some of which Kim has been working on for years, but bringing them together reveals an openness and vulnerability to both her lyrics and the sound of her voice, especially on the cautiously optimistic ‘Disobedience’. Like her contemporary, Kim Gordon, did with ‘The Collective’ earlier this year, Deal demonstrates an appetite for sonic adventure and an ability to disarm and surprise us on ‘Nobody Loves You More’, even after all these years.