ROMANTICA REVIEWS...
CMJ New
Music Report, Apr 22, 2002
Luna treats
the electric guitar like a magic wand. When Dean Wareham and
Sean Eden strum and pick, hypnotic sounds emanate, creating
a world of forever dusk. Romantica wraps you up in a comfortable
cocoon of dream pop, psychedelic swirls and witty lyricism.
After playing record-label bingo, Luna has softly landed with
Jet Set, crafting an album to stand beside the mastery of Penthouse
and the timelessness of Wareham's previous band, Galaxie 500.
Lest you think that the band's seventh album signals a rut,
factor in enchanting new bass player Britta Phillips (pop culture
footnote: Britta played the punky guitarist in the 1988 movie
Satisfaction as well as being the voice of cartoon pop diva
Jem). This is her first studio album, and her playful bass
work and lush vocals add a new aura to Luna. Recorded on a
smaller budget than the band's major-label offerings, this
album has a raw and immediate feel. The wizardry of Dave Fridman's
(Mercury Rev, Flaming Lips) mix also keeps the album from being
just another Luna record. The duet "Mermaid Eyes" is gorgeous,
with synthesized orchestration and '60s French-pop spookiness.
Whether it's the fuzzed-out glam rocker "1995" or the slinky
groove of "Dizzy"(which brilliantly lifts from Van Halen's "Jump"),
Romantica casts 12 spells that bewitch.
- Chris Larry:
CMJ New Music Report Issue: 759
SPIN,
June 2002
“Once we
had dreams, now we have schemes,” croons Dean Wareham on Luna’s
sixth studio album, Romantica. He could be singing about busted
dot-coms or the 2001 Mets, but the lines read like a reality
check for mid-90’s modern rockers. After the grunge rush, as
label budgets shrank, the “prestige act” -- the cool, commercially
underachieving band major labels kept around because it’s presence
classed up the roster -- became an endangered species. These
days, if it ain’t going gold, it’s just going out the window....
Luna’s last
LP proper, 1999’s The Days of Our Nights, was almost spitefully
spacy, a fuzzed-out, passive-aggressive kiss-off to major-label
middle managers. Now Wareham’s back on an indie -- and his
A-game. Opener “Lovedust” is sharply ironic and erotic in turns
(“When candles light themselves / and the air turns creamy”)
and “Black Postcards” makes escapism downright funky. Yet there’s
no avoiding Romantica’s sad, sad heart. (Whether Wareham’s
hurting over a woman or a coldhearted multinational corporation
is another story.) Fizzy delights like “Black Champagne” and “Renee
is Crying” greet the sunset with a Sex on the Beach in one
hand and a freshly served divorce summons in the other. It’s
an album that presents its charms and its bruises with the
same coy wink.”
-- Andy Greenwald
NYLON,
May 2002
“In 1995
I told a thousand lies,” confesses Dean Wareham on Luna’s seventh
album; but what he forgets to mention is that few people tell
them quite as beautifully. See, 1995 was the year Luna released
their gauzy, gorgeous masterwork Penthouse, which sounds modest
the first time you hear it and transcendent by the tenth. So
let us be thankful that the singer is still telling those lies
on Romantica, albeit with increased silliness: “Salt and pepper
squid / and Singapore noodles / I could look at your face /
for oodles and oodles,” he sings in “Renee is Crying.” The
album’s title could be the name of the genre that Luna cultivates
more fluently than most anyone else. Though the pace speeds
up on “Weird and Woozy” and “1995”, most of the album rides
the same relaxed-to-languorous groove Luna has spent a decade
perfecting, kissed by Wareham’s dry martini voice and drenched
in his and Sean Eden’s liquid guitars. Oh, those guitars. They
splinter and they shimmer; they thicken and they quicken; they
offer you champagne and nibble on your ear and pay for your
cab home. They’re so luxurious they’re practically decadent,
but no one’s stopping you from treating yourself.
-- Michaelangelo
Matos
LUNA LIVE! REVIEWS
2/20/01
Luna Live!
Rob Sheffield - Rolling Stone Magazine
A document
of one of indie rock’s best live bands
Dean Wareham
and his band of New York guitar aesthetes have long been one
of indie rock’s most beloved live acts, and so it’s about time
they got around to the chakra-clearing live album they’ve always
had in them. For sheer sonics, few other bands can match the
pleasure of Luna’s languid, decadently ethereal trance pulse.
On their studio albums, especially 1995’s near perfect Penthouse,
the sleek polish is part of the seduction, so it’s a revelation
to hear the kids rock out on straight-ahead live versions of
such phenomenal songs as “Chinatown”, “Tiger Lily” and “Lost
In Space.” Better yet, in extended jams like “Pup Tent” and “23
Minutes in Brussels,” the mellow groove bubbles over into a
crescendo of blissed out twin-guitar squiggles. There’s also
a gratifyingly frisky revamp of “4th of July”, and indie classic
by Wareham’s former band, Galaxie 500. Live albums are usually
for fans only, but Luna Live! is a fine place for newcomers
to get a first taste of a band worth knowing intimately - and
the next best thing to an actual Luna show.
- Rob Sheffield Rolling Stone Magazine
1/29/01-
LUNA
Live!
Live albums
are rarely justified, even from the great and the good - you
get the sounds, but neither the sights nor smells. But Luna’s
credentials are stronger than most. In the studio, their VU-patented
riff logic gets embellished with strings, keyboards and a general
otherworldly ambience. On a
stage, however, they revert to two guitars, bass and drum basics - which as
Dean Wareham himself says, “are probably the strengths of the band anyway”.
Well, somewhat. Wareham and six-string foil Sean Eden belong to the New York
hipster pantheon of electric guitar alchemists, and their groovy, meditative
parlaying consistently elevates Live! beyond the realm of optional-for-diehards-only
purchase. The tracklisting generously visits each of the band’s five albums
- with a rare detour to G500 days with 4th of July - and proves what most Luna
aficionados have long held to be self-evident: that for a nimble-fingered dude
who sings like Kermit the Frog, Wareham is beyond compare.
Keith Cameron
MOJO Magazine
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