DIGITAL DRAMA, ANALOG HEART

When I was smoking pot,” Kim Deal says, using her glasses to gesture, “I tuned my Autoharp so every single peg, whatever, string, was the same note. So it just went 'Wzzzschhhhhhhhh.' I did that high. I’ve never been able to put it back.”

I tell Kim Deal that’s amazing.

“Stop.”

I tell Kim Deal that, no, it is.

“No,” Kim Deal says, “it isn’t."

The songwriter then undercuts her own denials, admitting to using the Official Kim Deal One-Note Autoharp (patent pending) on one of the songs she’s been working on over the past 10 years. She says, “I think we used it on ‘Big Ben Beat.’ There’s a part of the song where I went ‘Wzzzschhhhhhhhh’ in an amp, etc., then spun it backwards on a fourtrack and distorted it, and then it goes real quiet. And I went up to Albini [Steve Albini, the Chicago engineer who passed away on May 7 of last year] and I had this noise, and he said, ‘What is that? Digital drama?'"