FILTER ALBUMS
Raw Deal
Breeders founder’s solo debut synthesises loss, grief and pain into glorious, life-affirming pop. By Stevie Chick.
Illustration by Sarah Sumeray.
Kim Deal
★★★★★
Nobody Loves You More
4AD. CD/DL/LP
WHILE PEERS like former Pixies bandmate Frank Black and fellow Daytonian Robert Pollard revel in their productiveness, Kim Deal prefers the slow-drip approach. Her band The Breeders have released a mere five albums over the 35 years since they formed, while her sole side-project, The Amps – a stopgap outfit founded during a temporary feud with twin-sister and Breeders bandmate Kelley – folded after one album, and her first solo album under her own name has been over a dozen years in the making. Deal ascribes this slow pace to a hazy perfectionism on her part. Though she says she’s always writing, she told me a decade or so ago that “avoiding cliché” was paramount, suggesting that for every song we get to hear, there are dozens more lying rejected in the demo pile. For Deal, songwriting is a slow process of honing, of homing in to that unique voice so recognisable from her work to date – a voice that rings so clear, and funny, and sad, and with such deft power here.