Thanks to her work with Pixies, The Breeders and The Amps, Kim Deal is indie rock royalty. Earlier this year, as a token of her respect and admiration for the 63-year-old Dayton, Ohio-born singer/songwriter, alt.rock-loving pop star Olivia Rodrigo invited The Breeders to open for her at her April 5 GUTS World Tour show at New York's iconic 20,000-capacity Madison Square Garden. Deal was quite touched, and impressed, by the reception her band received.
“I go to rock shows,” she tells The Irish Times. I have never had to hold my ears because of that screaming and the ear-shredding loudness. It’s quite something, isn’t it? It was really exciting. Evidently, I think [The Breeders' brilliant 1993 single] Cannonball blew Olivia Rodrigo’s mind when she heard it. She talks about her time in life before hearing Cannonball and then after having heard Cannonball.”
Talking to Billboard, Deal added, “She said she listened to the song and it blew her mind open, or it blew her world apart, or something like that, which is really cool to know that music does have the power to transform one’s experience, being able to listen to a song and have it just blast my perspective wide open. Like there’s something more.”
Deal is releasing her debut solo album, Nobody Loves You More via 4AD on November 22. She produced the album herself, with longtime [and much-missed] friend Steve Albini engineering several songs on the record, which included recording an orchestra for a song called Summerland. Deal had first worked with Albini in Pixies, and later went on to play at his wedding in Hawaii. She told The Guardian, earlier this year, “He’s better with me solo. He was more open to being adventurous.”
“I can’t explain how special Kim is,” Albini's wife Heather Whinna recently told the New York Times, “except to tell you that I know that Steve admired her more than he admired anyone else in music.”
