Do You Love Me Now?: Kim Deal

Posted by: zac | From: August 8, 2005

My tentative love affair with the Kim Deal began over ten years ago, under the sweltering August sun of George, Washington. A fairly heavy day for me: my first concert proper was to expose me to many a wonder, not the least of which would be my first Nick Cave and Smashing Pumpkins performances. I was 13 years old, and had made the mistake of wearing sandals--a slip up I came to regret the second that a then-fledgling major label band named Green Day opened the day-long crash course in alternative rock, causing the sudden disappearance of my footwear from beneath me. Kim was 33.

Sure, I'd heard that rolling radio phenomenon "Cannonball," and had just barely borrowed my friend's Bossanova cassette, but the Breeders were little more than a footnote in the spectrum of performers at alt-rock's alter--Lollapalooza 1994. That was until I saw Kim. From that moment on, we were inseparable.

The truth of the matter is, as a person who grew up largely without the careful hand of an older sibling guiding me patiently through the annuls of college rock's mystical history, it generally took me a little longer than some to fully develop my musical aesthetic--my spongy, ill-formed critical perceptions percolated on matters for a great deal longer than was often necessary, as a great deal of what I responded to didn't fully make contextual sense to me. Which is to say that Last Splash--one of the alternative rock era's true and total works of art--didn't exactly make sense to me upon first listen. Or second listen. Or for about two years. Still, there was always something there... and as the cracks began to fill in--Pixies discography, Pod, etc.--my understanding of Last Splash continued to grow, to the point now that it seems so much a part of my vernacular that it may as well be the Beatles or something. Strange that it all seemed so foreign then.

Still, Last Splash is a really weird alt-rock record, when it comes right down to it--sonically, very little else from the era sounds anything like it. Kim's beautifully layered, often totally obscured vocals singing siren songs in a style so singular and distinct that they should be patented, the stutter stopped and sludgy beauty, the crazy number of instrumentals, and one of the weirdest hit singles of any era (seriously, have you ever listened to "Cannonball"? 'Kay, first of all, shit starts out with this weird, super distorted "check, check, check," followed by multiple voices doing some kind of primal chanting, which suddenly give way to some soft rim-and-hardware hits on a drumkit. Then into the most infectious two chord pop song of all time--underneath which we hear the Deal sisters cracking their shit up for the first verse, like it's all some sort of caustic joke they've just played on us, drilling us with a melody that will never, ever leave our heads completely--then into one of the least memorable choruses of ever. Then there's the three solid seconds of silence in the middle.). No wonder it's quite possibly the most common record at every pawn shop I've ever been to (next to R.E.M.'s Monster, of course)--it's an altogether impossible sell to teenage kids who were at the time just trying to round out the Columbia House orders.

But enough about Last Splash for now--what I really want to talk about is Kim.

Beginning her career as Mrs. John Murphy (later divorced)--bassist and very occasional songwriter for that band that won't fucking stop touring these days--Deal silky, husked voice was always the butter on the Pixies' otherwise (palatably) caustic howl. I've always been a fan of the writing of Everett True, and I distinctly recall that the first piece of his that really connected deeply with me was a snarky dismissal of the Pixies catalog--which stated first that the band only had two good records, and second that "Gigantic" was by far their greatest song, and that Frank Black was an idiot for not exploiting Kim Deal's talents more often. This stupidity was set in stone with the mid-Pixies release of Pod, the Breeders' first record.

As previous stated in the annuls of GBoAT, Pod is something like the perfect counterpoint to Frank Black's self-titled solo album, together defining the two most distinct halves of the Pixies. Needless to say, Pod is totally brilliant.

Initially a collaboration with Throwing Muses' Tanya Donnelly (who went on to bore us all with Belly), the Breeders soon became largely Deal's... well, deal by the time her twin sister Kelley joined the band to record Last Splash. We've already talked about Last Splash, so let's move on to my second rendezvous with the lady Deal--this time one year later touring behind Pacer, the one and only album released by her poorly-received Breeders side-project (formed while Kelley was in one of her frequent rehab stints) called The Amps. Now 14, my love for Kim had matured a great deal of those months--enough for me to see past the awe-inspiring youthful beauty of openers Bikini Kill (who earlier that year I had learned I was supposed to like), and patiently await more womanly wiles. Like most people in 1995, I was pretty bummed on the Amps, but the ten years that have past since have really done wonders for Pacer--though it never really jumps out at you like the rest of the Deal catalog, it has a lot of subtle charms, not the least of which is the largely overlooked single "Pacer," I song which I've probably listened to more than any other in the past year, "B.Y.O.B" included.

After the Amps fiasco, the Breeders, for all intents and purposes, disappeared for the better part of eight years--living high on royalties from Prodigy's uber-hit "Firestarter," which samples a chunk of "Cannonball." In that time, Kim dropped a couple of memorable guest spots--most notably on Sonic Youth's "Little Trouble Girl," which may very well (stupidly) be my favorite Sonic Youth song.

In the mean, I secretly began harboring the fear of near-inescapable disappointment married to such high expectations.

After countless false starts trying to record a follow-up to Last Splash with a bunch of different line-ups, the band finally mustered Title TK in 2002. (TK is a shorthand copyediting placeholder for "to come"--a grinning reference to the record's long delay.) It's a little indulgent, sure, and by no means worth the years of production that went into it, but any record that can withstand eight years (!) of expectation, has got to be doing something right.

In awkward conclusion, I'd like to solidify for you, dear reader, not only my overwhelming obsession with Kim Deal's music, but also my generally inexplicable physical attraction to her to this day. This obsession is so deep, in fact, that some years ago had a rather involved make-out dream that revolving around Kelley Deal, and when I awoke, I was really disappointed with myself. And they're TWINS. So maybe she's a little manish, and, like, 20 years my senior. So what? She also the Greatest Band of All Time, and that's gotta count for something, right?

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