“I’d like to get a Flying V. I saw James Hetfield of Metallica playing one live, and I thought, ‘He’s got such a great guitar sound’”: Kim Deal on finally making her solo debut, working with Steve Albini and why she hates bright guitar tones

Kim Deal plays her Fender Strat as she performs at London's Roundhouse in June 2025, the stage lit up in blue. — (Image credit: Lorne Thomson/Redferns)

Nevermind the incongruity. To watch a beloved alt-rock pioneer like Kim Deal open arena concerts for a mainstream pop star, three decades after her lo-fi crossover hit Cannonball shot up the charts, is to see the enduring influence of the ’90s alternative nation.

That’s exactly where she and her bandmates in the Breeders stood for four sold-out nights at Madison Square Garden in 2024, as a special guest of Olivia Rodrigo – a devout fan of Deal’s work as well as bands like Hole and the Riot Grrrl scene.

With more than a dozen albums and EPs scattered across her work with the Pixies, the Breeders and the Amps – and with monster crowd-pleasers like Gigantic in her back pocket – Deal, now 64, has earned the right to be jaded. But she’s too curious and good-natured to fall into that trap, so, after finishing her nightly set fronting the Breeders, she made sure to stick around for the headliner.

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With the Breeders on a break, Deal decided to channel her songwriting into her first solo album, Nobody Loves You More. Arriving at the end of 2024, the record made it clear how integral her songwriting, voice and presence were to the Pixies in their classic era, and why Kurt Cobain took the Breeders on tour in 1993, introducing them to larger audiences and paving the way for their breakthrough with that year’s Last Splash.

On Nobody Loves You More, Deal took her songwriting and arrangements in a different direction. Within the first 10 seconds of the album-opening title song, after introducing the vocal melody over a single guitar chord, the song turns with a swell of orchestral strings and a bossanova drum beat. A minute and a half later, a blast of big-band brass sits where a guitar solo might have appeared on a Breeders song.

So I went to L.A. and stayed there for about two years, and I began doing stuff on my own. I met some drummers out there, I did some solo seven-inches, and I kept writing songs. And then I got to recording with Jack Lawrence from the Greenhorns, the Raconteurs, who’s in, like, fucking Kentucky – I recorded with him at Candyland. I thought, I don’t want this to be a seven-inch, I think this should be an album track. And that’s when I began to stir everything I did and make it like an album.

But the strings were a big surprise for me. He had 11 players and the whole room was mic’d up beautifully. Everything was run smoothly. Nobody’s in a hurry, nobody’s rushed. And he did such a fantastic job, it was one take. But even though it was done beautifully and it was so elegant, it’s still Albini – he looks at us and goes, “You guys like that? So we don’t need to do it again then, right?” [Laughs]

Jim Beaugez has written about music for Rolling Stone, Smithsonian, Guitar World, Guitar Player and many other publications. He created My Life in Five Riffs, a multimedia documentary series for Guitar Player that traces contemporary artists back to their sources of inspiration, and previously spent a decade in the musical instruments industry.