A Sweet Deal for Kelley Deal 6000

Since her drug arrest in 1994, Breeders guitarist Kelley Deal has come to grips with addiction and its repercussions--including the ongoing hiatus of the Breeders. While sister Kim took the lo-fi road with the Amps, Kelley put together her own band, started her own label (Nice Records) and released an album.

Though “Go to the Sugar Altar” is a somewhat disjointed collision between sweet pop impulses and punk-inspired noise, when Deal led her new band, the Kelley Deal 6000, through most of the tracks from it on Thursday night at the Whisky, even the most unruly numbers coalesced around the group’s tight playing, Deal’s self-possessed stage presence and pert sense of humor.

At one point, after diving for a cigarette and lighting up, Deal shot a knowing look at the audience and quipped with mock defensiveness, “I don’t have an addictive personality.” And yet even as she was able to find humor in a pretty sober situation, she just as acutely tapped into the serious side of a comic interlude.

Closing the set, she invited members of openers Cake Like to join her band for a rambunctious rendering of ABBA’s “S.O.S.” As the ensemble careened through the ‘70s hyper-pop classic, Deal sang with just enough tongue-in-cheek attitude to acknowledge the kitsch factor in covering ABBA, but enough respect to cut through the melodrama of the tune and capture the feeling at the heart of it.