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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
2/2/01 -
Streaming
video of an interview and three songs (Lovedust, Beggar's Bliss,
Moon Palace) featured on The E-coustic Sessions hosted by Nevin
Martell.
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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