The Kelley Deal 6000

Boom Boom Boom (Nice)
by Jamie Kiffel

Heroin, halfway house, guitar. Successful band, oppressive twin. Kelley Deal couldn’t play it straight, so she smacked herself pasty-faced and silly, wrenched herself free of the habit, and wandered off to play alone. The Kelley Deal 6000 lays no claims to The Breeders. It is Kelley’s own act, on Kelley’s own label (Nice Records), with Kelley’s own songs. These tunes are as confused by the sudden light and as curious to be out and about as their singer is. Guitars plink, plank, plunk through fuzzed-out tunes interspersed with mewling, paper crumpling, and roly-poly, marble-mouthed madness. Deal does strange things on this pseudo-pop album. She discusses a sick boyfriend’s death with Heathers-esque vocal smirks. She asks where the home team went, and sings a few bars in sharp-cornered, fifties style about “a teenage dream.” She chastises the “confidence girl” who catalogues her looks with nervous disdain, and Deal shouts at her with Janis Joplin-like abandon. Her clumsy, lopsided ballet about wanting to be a stripper conjures up images of the brightly hopeless protagonist of Welcome to the Dollhouse, awkwardly sliding her stubby fingers up a too-cool rock singer’s thigh. Boom! Boom! Boom! ranges from distorted, mashy vocals over jingly, cellar-echoed instruments to bizarre and nearly unlistenable swirls of noise. This collection is emotional, ratty-edged, coffee-ringed and cat-crushed, loved and mutilated. The music circles through and rolls back, like a many-layered Mobius strip. Whether you see the image embedded in the splattered mess or just the bloody pulp, these songs are bound to put a Clorox-resistant stain on the wall of clean, pop sanity.