After various singles over the years, the former Pixies member, and Breeders musician finally releases her first full solo album, a truly fabulous execution of superb songwriting, sharp, heartbreak lyrics, diverse musical styles and instruments across indie, rock and pop, all performed with beautiful tenderness, grit and gusto. The title track is an exquisite slow number, dripping in emotion and a gorgeous melody, and the entire album is suffused with a sense of potential mortality, whether that be of family members, but also chief engineer on the album, Steve Albini. And yet is also thrums with vitality. Love You More is another gem, leaning towards country with pedal steel, as well as violins, and is a nod to her mother. With the freedom to add or remove instruments as she pleases, the brass is beautiful with another fabulous melody, and Deal’s dark, candid humour, shaped by her Dayton, Ohio background, coming through: “Oh, all hold up / And abandon plans for the good times / Where forgotten roads take lost lives/ To beautiful kids on the coast / Clearly all of my life / I've been foolish/ Tried to hit hard, but I blew it.” Crystal Breath is another belter with its catchy, crunchy, gnarly indie riff and beat. A wide variety of pop and rock and dynamics is explored though this album, gutsy and tender, devil-may-care, swaggering and yet sensitive, from Disobedience to Wish I Was, the smart, ironic fast-talking, thunderous noise and feedback of Big Ben Beat, the surreal, ghostly experimental sounds of Bats In The Afternoon Sky, the sunny, swing feel of Summerland, to the sweet, defiant swagger of indie closer A Good Time Pushed - “Now’s the time for me to get what I want … I’ll see you around.” Now 63, Deal seems again like the real deal - after all sorts of triumphs and tragedies, at the very top of her game. Brilliant. Out on 4AD.
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