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Deal isn’t smiling on the cover of Nobody Loves You More, her new album, but the art bears some similarities: Deal is floating on a platform in an expanse of gentle, dark blue waves, accompanied only by a few pastel-colored amps, her guitar, a stool, and a flamingo. It’s an unmistakably lonely image, but for Deal, failure doesn’t mean loneliness. It’s not even necessarily a bad thing.

“I mean, at least something magnificent was tried, you know?” says Deal. “At least there was something to fail. That’s an endearing thing. I think there’s a sweetness to seeing somebody get their ass kicked, because they were in it. It warms my heart to see that, just people getting out there. Maybe it gives me the courage and confidence to try something. It’s okay if I get my butt kicked. At least you’re trying something.”

“I think there’s a sweetness to seeing somebody get their fucking ass kicked, because they were fucking in it.”

Nobody Loves You More feels at least a little like Van Ader’s journey: an artistic project so long in the making and so precious to its creator that they’re willing to break from all conventions and face the abject terror of being judged by the world. That might seem like nothing new for Deal, who’s played music professionally for over 35 years, first with Pixies, then with the Breeders. But this LP marks her first proper solo album under her own name—a thought that mortified her for a long time. (“I like rock bands,” she says.) Even when she recorded and released what could be called “solo” music, she released it under a pseudonym. Initially, it was to be Tammy and the Amps. “I still was so uncomfortable, so I created Tammy and the Amps,” explains Deal. “I’m Tammy, who are my band? It’s the amplifiers downstairs in my basement. But the Tammy thing sort of got on my nerves so I just dropped it, so it was called the Amps.” She also assembled a band around that concept and released Pacer under the Amps’ name in 1995.

Deal’s mother wasn’t the only loss that went into this collection of songs. Her father passed, too, after a prolonged illness. “My dad was this big bravado sort of personality and watching them get extinguished a little bit every day… I don’t know,” she says. “They both died at home. I’m very proud of that.” But writing “Are You Mine?” wasn’t painful for Deal; she says it was a comforting experience writing the gentle arpeggio on her Candelas nylon-string acoustic.

Deal assembled the bulk of Nobody Loves You More in her Dayton, Ohio, basement, recording with Pro Tools and a particularly pleasing Electrodyne microphone preamp. (Some of the songs date back more than a decade—versions of “Are You Mine?” and “Wish I Was” were initially recorded in 2011 and released as part of a series of 7″ singles.) Deal recorded a good part of the record’s drums, bass, and guitar from home, but other contributions came in fits and spurts over the years, from old faces and new. Her Breeders bandmates, including Mando Lopez, Jim MacPherson, Britt Walford, and sister Kelley Deal, all pitched in, as did Fay Milton and Ayse Hassan from British post-punk band Savages, and the Raconteurs’ Jack Lawrence.

Kim Deal’s Gear

Guitars

Amps

• Marshall JCM900
• 4×12 cabinet
• Kalamazoo combo

Strings & Picks

• .011-gauge strings
• Dunlop Tortex Standard .60 mm

One day, ex-Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Josh Klinghoffer stopped by the studio to see what Deal was working on. He listened to “Wish I Was,” and scrambled together a lead idea. Deal kept the part and expanded it over time, leading to Klinghoffer’s writing credit on the record.

Deal used her trademark red ’90s Fender Stratocaster HSS along with a ’70s goldtop Gibson Les Paul for most of the electric work, pumped through either her long-time Marshall JCM900 or a tiny vintage Kalamazoo combo. Deal has never been a gearhead—at one point on our video call, she uses a tooth flosser as a pick to demonstrate some parts on her Candelas. “Kelley is a pedal person,” she says. “I’m not doing leads. I’m just doing a rhythm that needs to sound good.”

“I don’t think I’m taking it very well still, actually, or I’m a sociopath because I don’t even talk about [Steve Albini] in the past tense.”

Over the years, Deal’s sonic thumbprint has been tied up in the work of her good friend and frequent collaborator Steve Albini, the producer, engineer, and musician who died unexpectedly in May 2024. (Deal quips, “Steve’s the lead character in my own life.”) Albini and Deal began working together in 1988, on Pixies’ debut LP Surfer Rosa. Their friendship continued over decades—Deal even performed at Albini’s wedding in Hawaii, for which he gifted her a ukulele—and the final sessions for Nobody Loves You More were under Albini’s watch. His parting hasn’t been easy.

“I got a text: ‘Call me,’” remembers Deal. It was a mutual friend, telling Deal that Albini had passed. “He told me and I just said, ‘You’re absolutely wrong. That didn’t happen.’ I don’t think I’m taking it very well still, actually. I don’t even talk about him in the past tense. I say, ‘What he likes to do is this.’ I never think, ‘What Steve used to like to do.’ My head never goes there. I wanted to record a song that wasn’t working and I said, ‘I need to do it from top to bottom at Albini’s.’ That’s not going to happen.”

YouTube

Along with Rob Bochnik and Spencer Tweedy, Kim Deal plays two tracks from Nobody Loves You More for a holiday fundraiser in November 2024 in Chicago.