On “Coast,” Deal pairs blunt, end-of-the-road storytelling with a breezy melange of trombone and trumpet, creating the picture of the tropical trickster grinning through grim times. “Clearly, all of my life I’ve been foolish,” she sings over its midtempo sunshine pop, her rasp buoyed by the ornate arrangement. “Tried to hit hard, but I blew it/But it don’t even matter/It’s just human to want a way out/It’s human to wanna win.” What might otherwise sound like a harsh reflection becomes amiable wisdom in Deal’s delivery, horns like life savers bobbing among her mellow melodies. Deal has said that the song was inspired by her experience of attempting to dry out in Nantucket in the late ’90s—years when the Breeders’ momentum from the platinum-selling Last Splash was derailed by addiction struggles. Deal watched young townies surf, thinking, How nice to be a person doing things outside, in daylight! Her frank storytelling makes “Coast” the most vivid song on Nobody Loves You More, like the account of a beachside outlaw whose levity is its own triumph.
The best moments are when Deal slows her pace and stretches out like a daydream, recalling, more than any of her other bands, her sublime cover of Chris Bell’s “You And Your Sister” with This Mortal Coil in 1991. The stirring “Are You Mine?” is a ’50s-style doo-wop slow-burner inspired by a time that Deal’s mother, who was struggling with Alzheimer’s, passed her in the hall: Her query—“Are you mine? Are you my baby?”—became the song’s hazy hook, the pedal steel a welling tear. The languid chug of “Wish I Was” feels of a piece, like a lost psych-pop Love tune unapologetically yearning to get back to youth. These atmospheric songs hinge on tiny details: the rise of a Beatles-esque guitar solo, the heavenly harmonies pouring down, the sudden admission that “I may find deep regret waiting for me in the end.” Deal croons “Summerland” like an alt-rock Sinatra or post-grunge Gershwin filled with total wonder: “I hear music blowin’ in the breeze.”
The Rat Pack style of “Summerland” and the easy groove of “Coast” carry the reassuring memory of older generations; knowing that Deal penned these tunes while losing her parents, you understand why she would want to sink into such palliative spaces. The elegiac title track, too, feels like a sweeping ode to the way that, even when we are adrift in life, love becomes an anchor. Like most of Nobody Loves You More, its statement of abiding adoration also marks Deal’s final collaboration with her late friend Steve Albini, with whom she once worked on the eternal, howling high harmonies of “Where Is My Mind” and the Breeders’ sensory masterpiece, Pod. It’s endearing, profound even, that Nobody Loves You More found these no-frills indie legends tracking an orchestra and a marching band together at Electric Audio—a radical left turn expanding our images of two artists better known for efficiency. What could be cooler?
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