I’m on a Zoom with Kim Deal discussing Nobody Loves You More, her first solo album in an almost 40-year long musical career—first with The Pixies, and later with The Breeders, the band she started with her twin sister Kelley Deal. Nobody Loves You More is a sweeping emotional landscape, with a musical score that ranges from romantic lullabies, to electronic dance beats, to just pure rock n’ roll, all with her signature honey-sweet voice, whose dulcet tones remain as lovely and devastating as ever. “If I had to look at all of it, I would say it’s about shame.” A beat. “No, I’m fucking around! Sort of.” She laughs. Her giddy energy comes off as a surprise for someone who has never not been the embodiment of an ineffable brand of cool. What about her “obsession with failure,” mentioned in the album liner—isn’t that a kind of shame?
“I’m not obsessed with failure, but with this sort of outlaw, bravado living—like the Waylon Jennings and the George Jones and their character arc. Their eyes turn yellow from liver disease, they have mutton chops, and they’ve got their cop glasses and they’re on their third wife.” She continues, “I’ve been thinking about it a lot since I’ve had to talk about [the album], and actually use words to get the feeling out of my head.” On the album cover, she recreates the last known picture of Bas Jan Ader, a conceptual artist who in 1975 set sail from Chatham Massachusetts in an attempt to reach Falmouth, England all by himself. His boat was found adrift ten months later, his body never recovered. “He didn’t make it. But he fucking tried. And it’s just failure, man.”