Luna was one of the great guitar rock bands of the 1990s, and interestingly enough, they still are.
As for where they fit into today’s musical landscape, you’d have to ask someone who knows how to locate such a vista. But they reformed in 2014 after “retiring” in 2005, and are currently on tour. (The process of their breakup is chronicled in the excellent documentary Tell Me Do You Miss Me, which, like all the best music docs, serves as a brilliant point of entry to the band’s music.)
Their last Seattle show (November, 2015) was masterful, emotional (at least for one weepy-ass audience member), and weirdly restorative. Midway through the most alienating decade imaginable came a confirmation that yes, in fact, one’s memory was trustworthy, and that yes, in fact, live rock bands used to feel like this. And when they decide to reform, they still do.
It’s impossible to deny that nostalgia is purgatory, but it’s also true that a song being played in a room, by humans for humans, is an event occurring in the present tense, regardless of the date on the copyright. And it makes the future feel less horrible.
Though Luna records were never less than good and frequently way more than that, the stage is where the intricacies of their playing, and the cool pop tones of the songwriting were always the most impressive. And having seen them play at least 10 times in three different decades, I’m happy to report that the Luna of now has lost not a single step. If anything, they’re even more spry now than in their heyday, having relinquished the burdens of first draft showbiz ambition and embraced the great good fortune of having an audience willing to wait 10 years for their triumphant return.
How to describe them to people who never heard them, then or now? Everyone always makes Velvet Underground comparisons. They’re not wrong, exactly, but it mainly rings true in the sense that roughly 65% of ’90s bands were direct descendants of either VU, Big Star, or both. In their dreams, anyway.
Luna has plenty of less boldface ingredients—a teaspoon of Lee Hazlewood, a soupçon of Serge Gainsbourg, lots of Television, the dreamier side of the C86 spectrum, and the previous bands of founding members Dean Wareham and Justin Harwood: Galaxie 500 and the Chills.
The truth, though, is that they really only sound like themselves. Still, the card is easy to play because Luna came from New York and usually looked really cool. Also, they were chosen to open the Velvet Underground reunion tour in Europe in 1992. And they toured with Lou Reed. Oh, and Sterling Morrison played guitar on their second record. So…
When I wrote about their farewell show 13 years ago in this very publication, observing that their best strengths were the “deft dual guitar interplay of Dean Wareham and Sean Eden, Wareham’s laconic wit and deceptively simple melodies, and the overall creation and maintenance of a cool, gentle, funny, urban, urbane vibe.” (Gratuitous VU reference redacted.)
The words are witty, even hilarious at times, but sufficiently understated that the best bits feel overheard, as if uttered by someone who declines to raise his voice over the din of the amazing Midnight Cowboy party you can’t believe you wound up at. Did he really just refer to foxes and hedgehogs? Did he really say “banana split… personality”? Someone “tastes of barbecue”? Rhyme “girlies” and “earlies”? “Say goodbye to your panties”? Yes on all counts! (No surprise Wareham is also an excellent prose writer.)
The guitar playing is nimble, sinuous, and astonishingly versatile. All tones are impeccable. The rhythm section is perfect. Recommended starters? “Sideshow by the Seashore,” “Tracy I Love You,” “Bewitched,” “Fuzzy Wuzzy,” “Bobby Peru” (sentimental favorite), “Moon Palace,” “Cindy Tastes of Barbecue,” “Tiger Lily,” and the perennial show closer “23 Minutes in Brussels.” (Also, their cover of “Bonnie and Clyde” with Laetitia Sadier is for the ages.)
Or you could just go see them play at the Neptune on Tuesday.
They recently released a new album of covers (including songs by David Bowie, Mercury Rev, pre-Buckingham/Nicks Fleetwood Mac, Yes, and Bob Dylan, among others), and an instrumental EP. The video for their rendition of the Cure’s “Fire in Cairo” features Rose McGowan:
Below is a Q&A I did recently with Dean Wareham. On the phone, in the late afternoon, his NZ-by-way-of-NYC-divided-by-Boston accent betrayed a bit of sleepiness, but he through it in an effort to deliver the wit and candor one has come to expect from him after reading 30 years of interviews.
(I didn’t even mention the small, indirect, and not-even-unfair dig he made at my old band in his frankly dazzling 2008 book, Black Postcards: A Memoir, because we sorted it out long ago.)
I apologize in advance if these questions are identical to ones you’ve been getting a lot lately.
No, I haven’t done an interview for a while, so it’s okay.
Oh, okay, oh good. Then what are your influences? Just kidding.
That is pretty much the worst one.
Or maybe where do you get your ideas?
“Which comes first, the music or lyrics?” It’s okay. I just feel like it’s just actually not very interesting. I don’t know. Maybe it is to someone.
I saw you guys the last time you were in Seattle and having seen you play many, many times over the years, probably the last 22 years or so I’ve seen you a bunch of times. Because there was the film and the pronouncement of breaking up in 2005. Is it different now?
It’s different. I think, well we get along better now than we did in 2005. It was just kind of reaching a boiling point back then. Which is just what happens when people are about to go through a break up. I think it just happens when there’s a lot of touring. Touring and making a record and touring and making a record for years until all of a sudden you find out that you’re sick of each other. Like a 10-year period.
And then you realize—
—You hate each other. You know, sometimes when you’re working with someone and friends, it gets difficult. It puts pressure on your friendship. Same thing with a band.
You have several modes of performing and recording, as a solo artist and as a duo with Britta Phillips, making records, playing shows, and doing film scores. But still there’s something about when the audience has a relationship with a band that goes back a long way. Not that this wasn’t in evidence at Luna shows in 2005, but has getting the band back together and being able to play some bigger shows again provided any important reminders in that department?
It’s exciting for people, it’s true. You know I went and saw, like five years ago, I went and saw the Clean. I think they’re a good example. They don’t play together very often but they have been playing together for over 30 years. You can tell that it’s just kind of an ease—they just know these songs inside and out and know how to play them. That’s something you only get from the real band.
You guys are returning to a world in which what you might call the middle class of at-least-semi-professional touring bands has thinned out quite a bit, not unlike the actual middle class of Americans.
Yeah, I mean a lot of people I know who are in the middle class of bands, they have jobs.
But at the same time, there remains—though probably only among a dwindling cadre of music critics—a stigma about reunions, maybe just because of the anxiety about a culture driven by nostalgia. Did that keep you from considering getting the band back together?
Look, you take some time away from it and… in 2005 people in the band were bitching about this and that, I don’t know. But you take some time away and realize, actually, it’s kind of awesome to go play the Fillmore in San Francisco or go on tour in Spain, halfway around the world and people know all your songs and sing along and come and see you on a Tuesday night when it’s raining. The longer you’re doing it, the more you get an energy from the audience. Like you said they’ve developed a relationship with the band and with the songs and there’s joy in that, too. The [latest] shows have been more fun than the farewell tour was, definitely.
Sometimes it’s hard to remember how quickly technology progresses, but, at the time of the documentary, as you noted, the iPod was still a relatively new innovation. But in 2018, cameras are always present. Aside from the thing of people recording entire shows, how do you guys feel about the expectation of being available for photos and stuff after the show? (I only ask because when you started out, that kind of thing was unheard of.)
Well, we usually go out and stand by the merchandise table anyway. Not always. We haven’t taken the step of charging people for that. I know a lot of people do. Some clubs will do it or the bands will do it but we’ve kind of resisted doing that so far. It does take a little longer now because everyone, everyone has a camera. One doesn’t always feel like doing that but again you feel like you have to. I have to remind myself to appreciative of people, there’s a lot of things people could be doing. Many have children and spend money and come see our show.
Luna has two new releases, the covers album A Sentimental Education and the instrumental EP A Place of Greater Safety. How has your experience of making records together changed, aside from the obvious trappings of budgets and sales expectations?
Well, we do them cheaper and quicker—you know, recording studios are just way cheaper now because the money has dried up. We still bother to go into the studio. You don’t have to go into fancy studios but you can go into studios with good equipment.
We made our album spending the money that we earned playing live and then we used this [crowdfunding/pre-order] company Pledge Music. The record was made, but it’s a way of raising money for manufacturing and publicist and radio and all this stuff, so that kind of on day one you actually recoup a lot of money quickly.
People are doing it various ways but the direct to fan sales, it’s not huge, but any time you can sell some signed vinyl directly to the fans, then you see that money a lot quicker than having to wait nine to 12 months for it to work through the distribution system. It’s not the whole thing—our records are still in stores and they’re still on Spotify—but it does help us not to go into debt.
Business considerations aside, do you still enjoy making Luna records? (Assuming you enjoyed it before…)
It’s always exciting in the studio. A new instrument gets put on something and the song goes from A to C—I don’t mean chords [laughter]; I mean it goes from one point to all of a sudden being very exciting. That only happens in the studio. That’s enjoyable. But from a business point of view it used to be you’d make an album and you’d get paid to make it and go on tour to promote it. And now it’s kind of like, actually, you tour because, at least for us that’s more lucrative. Maybe you make an album to help you tour or something.
I don’t know. These releases… maybe we cheated a little. We made an album of covers and instrumentals so we don’t actually write any, like… what you would call songs, perhaps? It’s kind of in the back of my head it’s like there are these bands that I really like, like say the Buzzcocks and Dinosaur—that’s a couple of examples of bands who have got back together and started making records again and everyone tells me they’re really good but I’m kind of resistant to buying them, to checking out their new stuff. I don’t know if that’s just me or if other people have that same kind of thing.
Time definitely seems to be accelerating. Like, Dinosaur got back together and made what I thought was an excellent record (Beyond), which even had a great Lou song on it. So I felt very satisfied with myself for keeping informed, and then I look up and realize that was 11 years ago and they’ve made three records since then.
Oh, really? Yeah, I remember reading Mojo one month how much they hate each other and then like the next month, Dinosaur’s back together… what? Anyway, that’s part of the reason why I thought like, instead of just saying “hey, Luna’s making their ninth album,” some kind of “concept,” like an album of cover,s I think is more interesting. I don’t know. And people like our covers. I like our covers!
I love your covers!
And it’s easier in the studio. The words are already written you don’t have to worry about whether they sound right or not.
It’s not your job. Apart from your old favorite bands who are getting back together, are you drawn to listening to music in the same way? Do you listen to the same stuff?
I totally still listen to old stuff. I listen to classical music, too. I also try and seek out new things. Checking that Pitchfork, you know. Aquarium Drunkard is a source of great old stuff and great new stuff. The things I really like now, I like Jessica Pratt, Cate Le Bon, I like this Australian guy, Alex Cameron. Moody Beach, she’s another Australian… I make an effort!
A lot of the really big indie bands I don’t necessarily love. It’s interesting in a way: What we do in Luna has become a little bit old fashioned. We just show up, and we don’t have computers with us, we don’t have like six musicians with us playing extra stuff. It’s just the four of us.
One other thing that has apparently changed is that it’s becoming increasingly important in touring world to plan way in advance. Do you already have the next year or two figured out?
We’ve got this weekend figured out.
