This is Kim’s debut solo album, although technically not her first release under her own name
(she self-released a five-part, 10-song 7” vinyl series in 2013).
Nobody Loves You More’s oldest songs are “Are You Mine?” and “Wish I Was.” Both were
written and originally recorded shortly after the Pixies’ “Lost Cities Tour” (2011), after which Kim
relocated to L.A. to work on new songs with musician friends including former Breeders member
Mando Lopez. Earlier versions of these songs were featured on the 2013 vinyl series.
First single “Coast” was recorded by the late Steve Albini at his Electrical Audio studio in
Chicago and features Kelley Deal (guitar), Mando Lopez (bass) and Lindsay Glover (drums).
Kim wrote the song in 2020 after attending her friend Mike Montgomery’s wedding. There, the
house band, The Grape Whizzers (which included members of The Buffalo Killers), jammed
Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville” with “revelatory levels of low self-esteem.”
The roots of “Coast” actually reach back as far as 2000, when Kim was staying on the
Massachusetts island of Nantucket (quite an unlikely retreat for someone who hates “the sun,
beach and watersports”). There, she spent a rough off-season among young surfers who were
constantly “check(ing) the WAM” for water conditions.
The original version of “Are You Mine?” was recorded on a Tascam 388 tape machine, but the
guitar track turned up missing. Kim re-recorded the tune at Candyland Studios in Kentucky with
Montgomery and the same musicians who played on the original recording, this time with the
addition of a pedal steel player.
“Wish I Was” was originally released as the instrumental b-side to “Are You Mine”,” because
Kim felt she “could never make the vocals sound cool.” The album version was taped during a
practice with Kim playing drums and singing through an amp in the room and Mando playing
bass.
“Summerland” is named after a Florida Keys island. It was written on a ukulele given to Kim as a
gift from Albini and his wife Heather, after Kim and Kelley handled the music at the couple’s
Hawaiian wedding. The orchestra was later recorded by Albini in a single take. The title reflects
Kim’s longstanding tradition of spending winters with her parents in the same Florida Keys
house – a trip they loved, but that she did not enjoy.
After their passing, Kim began returning to Florida on her own, and in March 2020 she began a
digital collaboration with Savages’ rhythm section of Fay Milton and Ayse Hassan. Kim
convinced her engineer friend Ben Mumphrey to meet her in Summerland and procure the
necessary equipment to overdub her parts on what would become “Big Ben Beat.” A few days
after these sessions, Ben returned home, the COVID-19 lockdown began and Kim was trapped
in the Keys for the next five months.
Kim eventually drove back to her Dayton, Oh., homebase with a new Pro Tools rig and a
scattered bunch of unfinished songs and demos. She and the New Orleans-based Mumphrey
began working on sessions remotely, taking advantage of the former’s basement studio and its
vintage preamps and microphones.
Now able to productively work from home despite the pandemic, Kim continued her basement
sessions several nights a week through 2021. When travel restrictions were lifted, she resumed
in-person recording sessions with Albini at Electrical Audio, always returning to the basement
for further work. The album’s final recording took place in November 2022, with Albini, Kelley
and former Breeder Jim Macpherson contributing to “A Good Time Pushed.” Mixing sessions
then took place in London with Marta Salogni. Former Breeder Britt Walford also appears on
Nobody Loves You More, as do new collaborators such as The Greenhorns’ Jack Lawrence.
Designed by Alex Da Corte, the album artwork touches on the doomed final voyage by
conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader, who disappeared while traversing the Atlantic Ocean from west
to east in 1975. Da Corte showed Kim a photo of Ader taken by his wife just before he set sail,
and it spoke to her current obsession with the concept of failure. Now, here on the cover, is Kim
re-enacting her own voyage.