As one deal falls apart spectacularly in the Oval Office, a very different kind of Deal is bringing it all together across that big, beautiful ocean. US indie slacker heroine Kim Deal has taken over the 2,000-capacity Barbican Hall for her sold-out debut solo UK show and packed the stage with 25 musicians, including a nine-piece string section, four horns and the Shards vocal quintet, as well as her six-piece band. It’s a big splash for the modest star – the overheads must be eye-watering – but Deal wants to do justice to her excellent solo album Nobody Loves You More and also, well, why the hell not? “This is a classy place,” says Deal, centre-stage in blue denim and surrounded by black-clothed players, “and we’ve been working very hard.”
It’s somehow fitting that the show takes place on the first day of spring because Deal herself has undergone a kind of rebirth with this new record. After close to 40 years in the business – she joined Pixies in 1986 – and with her other band The Breeders very much a going concern, having supported Olivia Rodriguez on tour last year, Deal put out an album that showed herself in a new light. These are unexpectedly lush, full-blooded songs which cast Deal, always the epitome of cool, as romantic and vulnerable. Some songs were written while she was looking after her parents, who died during the Covid period, while others reflect on her battle with addiction – “coming around is easy, coming down is rough”, she sings on the wistful chug of “Wish I Was”.
Having long been part of the gang in Pixies and The Breeders and even The Amps, her first attempt at going it alone in the mid-1990s, Deal has properly struck out on her own with Nobody Loves You More, even showing her face on its sleeve for the first time in her career. While the live rendition of the album – performed in full and in sequence – does expose some of its shortcomings (“Disobedience” and the Raymond McGinley of Teenage Fanclub-starring “Come Running” are middle-of-the-road nodders), the choir and strings add a luxurious dimension to the likes of the title track, “Coast” and “Summerland”, lending Deal’s earthy persona gravitas and grace. Two of the heavier numbers, “Crystal Breath” and ‘Big Ben Beat”, grind and crunch like bruisers from The Collective by her contemporary Kim Gordon, that other ageless ’90s icon. Deal’s pop-culture allure is such that even without this new record to promote, you suspect she’d have no trouble selling out a venue of this size – the fans tonight are simply excited to see her be herself, on her own terms. People shout, “I love you, Kim!” at regular intervals.
Deal began writing material for this record around the time she quit Pixies in 2013 and started a solo 7-inch series of lo-fi tracks she recorded in her basement and which she sent out to fans herself. She plays a few of these tonight in the second half of the set – lovestruck ballads “Biker Gone” and “Walking With A Killer” and then “Beautiful Moon” with just an acoustic guitar and cello. But the strongest songs of the night – or the most familiar, at least – are those by The Breeders. We get “Safari”, “Oh”, “Night Of Joy” and “We’re Gonna Rise”, with Deal, her voice unaffected by the years and mimicked by the choir, flanked by Mando Lopez on bass and Rob Bochnik on guitar rather than her sister Kelly and Josephine Wiggs.
After the standing ovation, they come back on for a loose run through The Breeders “Do You Love Me Now?”, from Last Splash. “Does love ever end?” the songs asks. Not if it’s for Kim Deal, that’s for sure.
Kim Deal’s set list, the Barbican Hall, London, March 1, 2025:
Nobody Loves You More
Coast
Crystal Breath
Are You Mine?
Disobedience
Wish I Was
Big Ben Beat
Bats In The AFternoon
Summerland
Come Running (with Raymond McGinley)
A Good Time Pushed (with Raymond McGinley)
Beautiful Moon
Night Of Joy
We’re Gonna Rise
Safari
Walking With A Killer
Biker Gone
Off You
Encore
Do You Love Me Now?