New Deal

Anyway, Kelley's had other important things to focus on, like writing, producing, playing on, and then setting up her own label for one of the most pleasant surprises so far this year: the Kelley Deal 6000's Go to the Sugar Altar (Nice). "After I got out of the halfway house I went into the studio with my friend Jesse, whom I met in treatment," she recounts. "He played guitar and drums, I played guitar and bass. It was almost like a test, like, `Is music still cool to me now that I'm not drunk? Do I still feel like a rock babe when I'm not sloppy and staggering? Is the rock gone now?' And I figured out that, no, it's not. Now isn't that something! Once I got sober long enough to have a clear head, I actually had more energy and more desire to do something with music."

Kelley focused that energy and desire into an 11-track debut that has its roots in the skewed, noisy pop of the Breeders but branches out in ways that few would have reason to expect from someone who didn't know how to play guitar five years ago. There's the tuneful chug-and-churn of "Canyon," a four-chord, mid-tempo rocker that Kelley fashions into one big hook with her sly but playful vocals, and the trashy bubblegrunge punk of "A Hundred Tires." Both would have been right at home on Last Splash (4AD/Elektra, 1993). With its out-of-tune acoustic-guitar strums, sloppy handclap rhythm track, goofy noodling electric guitar, and nonsense lyrics, "Trixie Delicious" is just the kind of quirky yet enjoyable throwaway that sister Kim's been tacking onto discs since her days in the Pixies. The jarring segue from angelic reverb-drenched vocals to a raucous, overdriven refrain on "Dammit" pretty much sums up the fusion of ethereal dream-pop and edgy punk that's fueled the Breeders all along.

And then there are wonderful aberrations like "Sugar," where Kelley lays a sexy falsetto croon over a soulful R&B groove held together by Grifter Dave Shouse's smooth Hammond-organ chords. On "Marooned" Kelley suavely croons "I paid the price/I can't get over you twice" with the tragic allure of a torch singer at a smoke-filled after-hours joint. And the disc ends with Kelley doing a little spoken-word against a spare backdrop of bluesy guitars. It's not one of the disc's stronger tracks, but still a long way from not knowing G from D.

"It's not brain surgery, now is it?" Kelley says of learning to play guitar. "And as far as songwriting goes, well, Kim wrote the songs in the Breeders so I really didn't have to. But all of the sudden it was like, I don't know, gosh, I guess I just started to have the desire."

Kelley also had some songwriting assistance from Shouse, who helped channel her fondness for the Staples Singers' "Let's Do It Again" into "Sugar," and from Jimmy Flemion of the Frogs. Her friend from rehab, Jesse Colin Roff, co-wrote five of the disc's tracks but bowed out after the band finished up a five-city tour earlier this year ("He didn't want to be playing in bars all the time"). Kelley had no trouble putting together a full-time backing group -- Nick Hook (drums), Marty Nedich (bass), and Steve Salett (guitar) -- or generating outside interest.

"We just started playing around here and then all of a sudden I was getting label offers. I was so impressed with myself, but when it actually came down to having to sign something I just couldn't do it. I really wanted to be convinced, I wanted to sign, I wanted to support corporate rock in any way possible. But I just couldn't. So maybe I won't sell a lot of records. At least I'll be able to pay myself back for this record and maybe make enough to do another one."

Besides, she still has the Breeders to think about. She's not, as she likes to put it, "an ex-Breeder," and the band haven't broken up. "I talk to my sister every day. I even joined the Amps on the road for a week and sang a bunch of songs with them. With this 12-step thingy that I'm doing you're not supposed to future-think. But in August, Kim and I both have time off and I think we'll probably end up hanging out together in her basement in Dayton. And that's really what it's all about. I mean, what am I going to do? Go out and party? I don't do that anymore."

Kelley Deal 6000 comes to T.T. the Bear's Place next Thursday, June 6.