Kim Deal has been in the music business for a long time, but she still encountered some surprises while making her first solo album.
Choosing the cover art for Nobody Loves You More presented the Breeders frontwoman, 63, with a whole host of options she’d never considered before — for instance, putting her own face on the record.
“Somebody at the label said, ‘You know, you could be on it,’” Deal exclusively told Us Weekly ahead of her album’s Friday, November 22, release. “And I was like, ‘I could be on it, couldn’t I?’ Why not? I don’t have a better idea.”
The final product features Deal afloat on a faux sea with her guitar, some amps and a flamingo. The artist said she is still feeling “a little weird” about seeing herself in ads for the album.
“I think this is quite subversive, look at me on the album cover, this is funny — and then they start to talk about promo,” she recalled. “I’m thinking my face will be on the vinyl record. You buy it at the store, it’ll be fine. But no. … It’s like, ‘Oh, no, that’s my motherf—in’ face, and it’s on an advertisement for a product now.’ And that was a big surprise for me.”
After nearly 40 years in the music industry, Deal is used to being in the spotlight — but she’s rarely faced it alone. With the exception of several solo singles she released in the early 2010s, she’s always been part of a band — Pixies, the Breeders, the Amps — so making a full-length Kim Deal record was a new adventure. To bring Nobody Loves You More to life, Deal worked with plenty of longtime collaborators, including her twin sister, Kelley Deal, and their Breeders bandmate Jim Macpherson. Still, she said it was a thrill to be fully in the driver’s seat this time around.
“I remember working with Mando [Lopez] on Breeders stuff. … We would go over and over it, like weeks and weeks coming up with ideas and stuff like that,” Kim explained. “In this case, the song [would be] pretty much done … and I had gotten maybe a demo or pretty much knew what I wanted.”
Her sister, however, had to do a bit more legwork. “Kelley did have to do sort of band stuff where she came over and I wouldn’t let her leave until she threw out all sorts of different guitar ideas for this song I’m working on,” Kim recalled. “It’s like, ‘Wait, don’t leave. Just wait a minute. Come here! I need something for this section now.’”
Another frequent Kim collaborator who worked on Nobody Loves You More is legendary producer Steve Albini, who died in May at age 61. The duo’s first collaborative project was the 1988 Pixies album Surfer Rosa, and they later joined forces for several Breeders LPs.
“He’s known for this punk guy [energy] and he was definitely that,” Kim said. “But one thing that really impressed me, one day we were doing a song called ‘Summerland,’ and that song has, like, an orchestra. … He was so respectful. He was so communicative. Every headphone box works. The mics are already set up. There are seats for everybody. Of course all the machines are on point, because of course they are. Everybody knew what they were doing. It was just so well-run, and it’s like, ‘Goddamn, he’s good at this.’ I just don’t see him like this much. And to me, that was really impressive.”
Next year, Kim will embark on a solo tour supporting Nobody Loves You More, with the hope of recreating the album as accurately as possible on stage.
“I want the trombone and the trumpet to be there,” she told Us. “I think that makes the song sound better!”
Nobody Loves You More is out Friday, November 22.
