Luna: Band Loved, Record Bypassed
Nirvana and more importantly Silverchair existed, but Luna,
formed in 1991 by Dean Wareham after the collapse of Galaxie 500, is the
greatest 90s band. Their synthesis
of rock’s hipster iconoclasts and pretentious know-it-all New York sensibility
hatched something uncanny yet subdued, detonating with Bewitched’s title track and sustaining them through 2004.
Wareham’s acrine vocals juxtapose the
quiver and punch of Sean Eden’s guitar licks, winding together like
cursive. If Wareham is Luna’s
head, Eden is the blood squirming through sonic veins trying to reach it. That might make Luna sound active but
their most daunting works are the attic sleepers that accompany their hits,
like “Kalamazoo” and “Freakin’ and Peakin’.” The collection containing these works, Penthouse, remains my favorite record by this band. Luna belongs to a very labelcentric era
of music and they never really broke
through. The canonical Penthouse should have been the album to
achieve this task, at least letting them the exposure of let’s say, Wilco, or
more recently The National.
But
Luna kept solemnly obscured by the coolness of their shadow. In hindsight, does this implore their
meaning? Is their timelessness
preserved by the measure of their intangibility? In a time when contracts were being overthrown as the sole
portal into American sub-mainstream and acoustic bedroom machines like O.A.R.
and Dispatch received the Napster bump, Luna remained sectored to their record
store domain, thrilling those who were lucky enough to stumble upon them while
wrapping their love affairs with The Velvet Underground.
To meet a Luna disciple is an unlikely
occurrence, a magical encounter. If
they’re committed their knowledge comes across deeply encoded and rich. Obsessive even, the way a Phish or
Norwegian metal fan will hold to a slim trill of notes, or bend, or lick like a
bible, isolating their self through commitment. Luna devotees pinpoint the tiny variances in a song that
make it eccentric. These
particulars are especially apparent on the Slide
EP, an effort driven by covers with unanimous praise and Penthouse, a satire of New York City
life so relatable it makes the Lower East Side feel like the entire eastern
seaboard.
After Penthouse, Luna’s best gambit for a
magazine editor’s standing ovation and swaths of fans, Luna surrendered to
whimsy. They regained footing at
the turn of the century with their antepenultimo release The Days of Our Nights.
Eden’s guitar work echoed Australian outfit The Church and the sway of
song progressed in a graceful cantankerousness. “The Old Fashioned Way” spreads out like police enforcing a
post-apocalyptic curfew. “Math
Wiz” captures regretful hearts puffing a spliff in a blue-collar basement and
composing an R.E.M. b-side.
Everything on The Days of Our
Nights is a placebo to something idealized, perfectly captured in the
album’s cover art, a portrait of newfound bassist Britta Phillips, soon to be
Wareham’s wife.
Like Luna’s
flagship sound, these works impact softly. When Wareham says, “Your dopamine receptors, Are shot to
hell, Your thoughts are spongy, You don’t seem well,” he’s being earnest yet
manipulative. Wholly boring in the
key of unified tongue and cheek.
But Luna can’t stop shimmering.
They’re a reflective puddle in a bustling nighttime city. Now step in it.
Between The Days of
Our Nights and Rendezvous, the
band’s farewell that occupied my headphones through my time in Oxfordshire,
along with A Grand Don’t Come for Free and
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, Luna
released Romantica. I think last night was maybe my
first listen to it in 10 years. It
never landed for me. As an
artifact, it’s an electrified piece of tissue that links The Days and Rendezvous,
but I still question whether it holds up.
Well, it doesn’t. It never held in the first place. Romantica
is a body of work exemplifying exactly why Luna never connected. It’s the tragedy of the band that deals
in songs but can’t appeal to a song-focused audience.
Luna traced a scalene trajectory and Romantica is the turgid side of their career. But no one can miss “Lovedust,” the album’s
opener, a 4/4 playground blooming with major chords and fish-in-the-barrel
lines like “I set a trap for you, But I’m the one who’s all caught up.” Shrug of shoulders inevitability
realizes Wareham’s narrator’s slip-ups.
“Lovedust” acts as a bookend to “California (All the Way),” Bewitched’s entry track, only the orator
implies nothing and bangs out direction like a GPS. Subtlety is lost, but at least there’s no fumbling with
buttons. Romantica contains Luna’s most dynamic drums, especially within
“Black Champagne,” which sounds like a The
Soft Bulletin b-side for good reason; the record was produced by Dave
Fridmann. Where Penthouse succeeded in being a paced,
coherent narrative, Romantica is front-loaded
like most of Luna’s works. A lot
doesn’t seem to happen, at least in context, on Romantica’s backside.
Ultimately though, the nuance of Wareham and co. make tracking Luna’s
pearls a scuttle. But you can
always count on them for a last song.
“Orange Peel” is as uncontrived and “it just came to me” as anything
Justin Vernon does. But with less
patience. Maybe even less control. But then it’s those disciplines Luna
lacks that make them my band. It’s through deep listening—and the fact I
happened to pluck Penthouse off the rock/pop shelf at Coconuts—that they ascend.
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