Luna’s outsider rock
by Seth Rogovoy

(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., Sept. 15, 2000) - “Enigmatic” has long been a favored adjective used to describe the band Luna. It’s been applied equally to the band’s sound, its lyrics, its personality, and its image.

Equally enigmatic to some is the disparity between the band’s critical acclaim and its commercial success. In fact, the band’s latest album, the wonderfully catchy and hypnotic “The Days of Our Nights,” was rejected by its record label, which then unceremoniously dumped the group. And shortly after its new label released the album, it went bankrupt.
Such is the life of an independent-minded rock band.

Of course there is a great tradition of influential, critically-acclaimed rock bands being utterly ignored by the mainstream press and radio, going back at least as far as the Velvet Underground, one of Luna’s seminal influences. And speaking to the group’s founder, leader and vocalist, Dean Wareham, one gets the sense that he’s resigned, if not totally happy, to be part of this outsider tradition.

Luna’s enigmatic, outsider rock will be on display at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art this Saturday, when the band performs at 8 p.m. in the Hunter Center for the Performing Arts. The Pioneer Valley band Drunk Stuntmen will warm up the crowd for Luna. Tickets are $12 in advance and $16 the day of the concert and are available at the Mass MoCA box office or by calling 662-2111.

Harvard graduate Wareham formed Luna in 1991 after the breakup of the Boston-based band Galaxie 500, another critical darling. Joining him were refugees from two other cult favorite guitar bands, including drummer Stan Demeski from the Feelies and bassist Justin Harwood of the Chills. The group recorded its first album, “Lunapark,” in 1992, with producer Fred Maher, who had worked with Lou Reed and punk legend Richard Hell.

Luna began touring in the fall of 1992, and by the next summer they were opening for Reed and his former bandmates from the Velvet Underground on that legendary group’s ill-fated reunion tour of Europe. Out of that experience, the group returned to the studio with Velvet guitarist Sterling Morrison, who played on the band’s sophomore album, “Bewitched.” Wareham doesn’t seem to mind the incessant comparisons of Luna to the Velvet Underground. “I think the Velvets created a fantastic fusion of noise and pop, and were a huge influence on lots of other bands, both during the punk explosion of the Seventies and to this day,” he said.

He adds that in addition to the Velvets, his early listening included Joy Division, Jonathan Richman, Television, and Big Star. He also notes that Luna is a band of four distinct musicians with different musical backgrounds.

Further cementing the group’s lineage as a descendant of New York guitar bands, the next album, “Penthouse” – which was recently named one of the best albums of the 1990s by Rolling Stone magazine – included a guest appearance by Television guitarist Tom Verlaine. The album also featured a secret hidden track which is a duet with Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab and a cover version of French songsmith Serge Gainsbourg’s “Bonnie and Clyde.” In 1996, the group released the album “Pup Tent,” and in the fall of 1998 the band recorded “The Days of Our Nights,” which was finally released a year later. The band has undergone several personnel changes in the meantime, and now includes bassist Britta Phillips and drummer Lee Wall, in addition to longtime guitarist Sean Eden.

Wareham, who spent his early years in New Zealand and Australia before attending high school in New York, said keeping a band together and dealing with record companies are both struggles. “The two are intertwined in a way,” he said. “It can be a struggle to make sure that everyone in the band is making a living, especially when you have to deal with record releases being delayed and record companies filing for bankruptcy.”
“But right now I feel very good about Luna. Having a new person in the band can rejuvenate us all.”

While Wareham concedes that Luna’s lyrics can be wry at best or occasionally even cryptic or obtuse, he pleads innocent. “To the extent that lyrics can be compared to poetry, maybe they’re not supposed to spell it out all the time. And sometimes they don’t make sense at all, but that’s not illegal.” He said that his songs contain “the usual topics for rock bands -- love, sex, drugs, automobiles, freedom, turmoil, paranoia, all mixed in with my own very small observations. Sometimes I’ll even allow myself to make a little political point, though I don’t like to hit people on the head with it.”

Luna’s songs also stand out for the manner in which they nod to an entire history of rock music, subtly quoting harmonic or rhythmic elements from classic and obscure tunes.

Wareham acknowledges this. “Sometimes I ‘quote’ other songs,” he said. “For example our song ‘Tracy I Love You’ has a little vocal section that is taken from a Pere Ubu song. At this point in the history of rock and roll, many of the most interesting bands are recombining disparate musical elements into their own sound. Stereolab is a good example of a band that is thoroughly original yet also very derivative.

“I’m sure you can hear the sources for certain things in Luna, but at the same time I think we have a very distinctive sound -- I think you can tell a Luna song before I even open my mouth to sing.”

Besides Stereolab, Wareham numbers Yo La Tengo, Mazzy Star, Spiritualized, Mercury Rev, the Flaming Lips, and Pavement among his favorite contemporary bands. “We may not sound alike, but I feel some sort of kinship with them,” he said.

As for the ups and downs of Luna’s commercial prospects over the years, Wareham sounds pretty fatalistic when he talks about trends in the music business.

“There have certainly been changes,” he said. “That’s one thing you learn pretty quickly. Just when you think you’re beginning to understand the structure of the business, radio changes dramatically, or corporate mega-mergers put thousands of people out of work.

“But the truth is radio has been consistently pretty awful for the last fifteen years. The explosion of ‘alternative’ radio didn’t help Luna very much, as we have never quite been the flavor of the moment.”

[This article originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on Sept. 15, 2000. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 2000. All rights reserved.]

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