Before the band's bittersweet farewell tour last year, New York-based indie-rock quartet Luna recorded seven studio albums of critically acclaimed somnambulate space rock. Beggars Banquet relives all the of the band's superfreaky memories with Luna's first-ever career spanning collection, BEST OF LUNA.
Produced by the band's founder, lead singer, guitarist, and lyricist, Dean Wareham, BEST OF LUNA contains 18 selections from Luna's studio albums recorded between 1992 and 2004. The compilation features music by all of the different Luna incarnations that have come and gone over the years, including Wareham; bassist and keyboardist Justin Harwood; drummer Stanley Demeski; guitarist Sean Eden; drummer Lee Wall and bassist, vocalist and keyboardist Britta Phillips. It also features additional appearances from The Velvet Underground's Sterling Morrison and Television's Tom Verlaine.
BEST OF LUNA draws heavily from the band's third album, Penthouse, which was named one of the "Best Albums of the '90s" by Rolling Stone magazine and also includes tracks from the first two albums that have been licensed from Elektra.
This will be released on the 9th October (outside the North America and Japan), and is a double CD set containing a bonus CD (Lunafied - Luna Covers) with a 24 page booklet.
LUNAFIED - Luna Covers
During their 12-year reign as indie-rock's dream-pop champions, Luna recorded a wealth of cover songs and scattered them on rare singles, EPs, tribute and soundtrack releases. Beggars Banquet gathers a choice selection of 17 of these extraordinary gems together for a special covers collection.
The 24 page booklet contains song notes written by Dean Wareham and rare photos plus a specially commissioned cover by Adrian Tomine. Altogether a fitting epitaph for a special band.
Luna - 'Best Of Luna' (Beggars Banquet) Released 09/10/06
"‘Best of Luna’ is a real slice of 1990’s nostalgia and one that’s been done well for a change..."
by Huw Jones on 20/10/2006
Following their split in 2005, New York based indie rock quartet Luna have released a best of album, produced by founding member, lead singer and guitarist Dean Wareham. Containing 18 space rock gems spread over 120 minutes this is a purchase well worth making if not for that alone. ‘Best of Luna’ has combined tracks from the seven studio albums the band released between 1992 and 2004 (most noticeably 1995’s ‘Penthouse’ which was named as one of the best albums of the 1990’s by Rolling Stone magazine) and the compilation features music from all the various band members that have come and gone over the years. In other words this is a complete career spanning collection of sheer brilliance.
There’s so much on this compilation that reminds you of just how good Luna were and how largely forgotten they’ve become. The track listing is that vast it’s ridiculous to try and list every track. The simple fact is that they’re all damn good and ‘Best of Luna’ is a real slice of 1990’s nostalgia and one that’s been done well for a change. Undeniably similar throughout but sufficiently different and with such a dream like signature sound its hard not to put it on, kick back, relax and sink into bliss letting Dean Wareham’s honey soaked vocals wash all over you and drip from the ceiling. From 1992’s ‘Lunapark’ LP comes the stripped down and floating ‘Anesthesia’, 1994’s ‘Bewitched’ flaunts ‘Tiger Lily’, a stunning, understated and powerful open hearted admission of the self. ‘Moon Palace’ swirling in its drug induced state is the opening track for the compilation taken from 1995’s celebrated ‘Penthouse’ LP, ‘Lovedust’ is a slice of heaven taken from 2002’s ‘Romantica’ and ‘Astronaut’ from 2004’s ‘Rendezvous’. These are just five of this writers favourite tracks. But its not all floating and swirling. There’s also an urgency to Luna that is largely understated but that’s there all the same and heard through tracks such as ‘Lost In Space’.
Not content with releasing ‘Best of Luna’ the compilation comes with a second CD of cover songs by Luna that have been and recorded over the years. And we’re not talking about a hastily assembled two or three thrown in for good measure or as a gimmick. There’s a further 17 tracks all there for your listening pleasure and what a pleasure it is. Among them are Serge Gainsbourg’s ‘Bonnie and Clyde’, John Lennon’s ‘Jealous Guy’, Fred Neil’s ‘Everybody’s Talkin’ and Guns and Roses ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’. There’s also a 24 page booklet complete with Wareham’s song notes, rare photos and a specially commissioned front cover by celebrated generation X cartoonist Adrian Tomine. What more could you possibly want from a great band.
Luna
Best of Luna
[Beggars Banquet; 2006]
Rating: 8.1
Luna's breakup was as civil and dignified as they come. After seven studio albums, a handful of lineup shifts, and numerous tours, founder Dean Wareham and his band agreed to split following a farewell tour. That was a couple of years ago, and now we get full closure with a Best of Luna disc, as well as a DVD documenting the group's final trek. The unassuming title is fitting for a group that counted subtlety as one of its key charms.
Following in the wake of Wareham's previous band, Galaxie 500, Luna became the early 1990s archetype for spacey indie pop. Their music was full of cosmic guitar interplay between Wareham and Sean Eden, but the rhythm section-- at first ex-Feelies drummer Stanley Demeski and bassist Justin Harwood, later Lee Wall and Britta Phillips-- was always solid and down-to-earth. Wareham remained the deadpan, lovesick guy at the heart of it all, and his liners for this compilation offer de facto justification for every track, regardless of which deserved ones may have been left out (*cough* "Bobby Peru" *cough*).
Best of opens with "Moon Palace", the first of five tracks from Penthouse and Wareham's personal favorite Luna song. "You were stuck in a dream/ And you wanted to scream/ But it's nothing at all/ No, it's nothing at all," he sings as guitars move between stoned country and a 14-hour Technicolor dream. Penthouse's top billing in the tracklist is fortuitous-- it's their best album, and anyone who likes this comp should seek it out-- but what's remarkable is how well the rest of Luna's material stands up to it. Solid to their final days, "Astronaut"-- from the band's 2004 swan song Rendezvous-- is one of Luna's best songs, with a drumbeat about four times brisker than anything else here and one of Wareham's strongest vocal performances.
This comp doesn't offer fans anything new aside from Wareham's booklet anecdotes, but it's an ideal intro for newcomers. What longtime fans will want to check out, though, is the DVD. Tell Me Do You Miss Me, directed by Matthew Buzzell, is one of those rare tour documentaries that manages to put a band's history-- particularly its demise-- in deeply humane perspective. When you see Wareham spending time with his son in Central Park, you know why he was no longer interested in the touring life of a working band.
The DVD also features some great performances, including footage of the band's final show, at the Bowery Ballroom. Buzzell also captures moments of tedium and good humor, such as Eden and Wareham amending one another's stories. In the end, it comes off as an honest portrait of honest people trying to make a living playing music and barely cresting out of the red into the black.
Taken together, the disc and DVD offer a succinct portrait of Luna. The credits-- including two appearances on the comp by Tom Verlaine, one by Sterling Morrison-- are eye-popping, the music is great, and you're left with a clear picture of the group, something you don't always get with career wraps.
-Joe Tangari, June 19, 2006
When it comes to veritable American alt-rock institutions of the last decade or so, the cliched adage of “you don’t know what you’ve lost till it’s gone” rings repeatedly and depressingly true. For when Luna disbanded amicably in 2005, not enough of the music-loving world paid their due respects, despite over 13 or so years of charming consistency. There are many identifiable reasons for the group’s relative anonymity of course. Singer/songwriter Dean Wareham’s preceding stint in the near-legendary Galaxie 500 has certainly cast a mythical shadow over all of his later works, that’s been impossible escape. Troublesome record label shifts have derailed favourable trading terms; with Elektra dumping the band in the US after 4 albums and Beggars Banquet neglecting to license 2004’s swansong album, Rendezvous, for European release. Aesthetically too, Wareham and co. have rarely fitted into prevailing fads or fashions; often being too mid-tempo, too geeky and - until the installation of bassist Britta Phillips - totally lacking in sex appeal. Whilst such factors may have unfairly conspired against Luna on a commercial level, it has allowed the group to steer a rewarding creative course that can be retrospectively recognised, as this double-CD set happily contests.
Whilst this European Beggars issue of the Luna’s ‘hits’ compendium does churlishly exclude extracts from the aforementioned US-only Rendezvous album, it has the edge over its Stateside Rhino counterpart through adding a slightly different edition of the previously download-only Lunafied covers collection as a bonus disc, instead of the bound-to-bore documentary DVD. Collectively these two CDs offer the fullest picture possible of Luna’s evolution, individuality, influences and wilful sense of mischief.
The choice selection of Luna album tracks and singles on the first disc gives a great grounding on the band’s studio canon; picking songs that capture the complete – albeit narrow - stylistic spectrum of Luna’s wares but which also gel together well as a likeable standalone long-player. Highlights abound, especially with songs from 1995’s acclaimed third LP, Penthouse. There’s plenty of gorgeous Galaxie 500-like dreaminess – thankfully minus the reverb-heavy fogginess - particularly on the elegiac “Anesthesia”, the deeply lovely “Lost In Space” and the jazz-inflected “Into The Fold”. In-between times, Wareham’s notable affection for the whimsical self-deprecating penmanship of Jonathan Richman is wrapped-up in the indie-pop of “Bobby Peru”, “Sideshow By The Seashore” and “Black Postcards”. Although Wareham’s gang members were never big experimentalists, the looped percussion, intricate bass-lines, mangled guitar noise, distorted trumpet and stream-of-consciousness lyrics on the imaginative “IHOP” showed that they could once have given the likes of Yo La Tengo or American Analog Set a run for the post-rock money. For the bulk of the band’s lifespan however, Luna’s links to The Velvet Underground/Television NYC-rock lineage were never shied away from, as is clearly evident on the most speed-driven moments collected here. In fact, for the blissful frenetic chug of “Friendly Advice”, The Velvets’ sadly-departed Sterling Morrison even chipped-in on guest guitar, as did Television’s Tom Verlaine for the towering epic strains of “23 Minutes In Brussels”.
Despite being culled from various b-sides and non-album sources, there’s no dramatic dip in quality throughout the bundled Lunafied disc, which finds Wareham reinterpreting elements of his diverse record-collection with fun, fondness and flair. From the sublime shoe-gazing treatment of Beat Happening’s “Indian Summer”, via a spectral six-string reworking of Kraftwerk’s synth-pop gem “Neon Lights”, through a stirring stab at Donovan’s “Season of the Witch” and a spooky drum-led reconstruction of Suicide’s “Dream Baby Dream”, there are lots of marvellous makeover moments to be found. The only downsides come from the absence of the previously released Luna renderings of Jonathan Richman’s “Dance With Me” and “Fly Into The Mystery”, the strange decision to include two marginally different versions of Serge Gainsbourg’s “Bonnie And Clyde” and the sad omission of the group’s reworking of The Stones’ “Waiting On A Friend”. Minor gripes aside though, Lunafied gives Wareham the future option of fronting the best quirky covers band around, should his post-Luna career ever turn sour that is.
Overall, this smartly compiled Luna anthology achieves the rare feat of being both a well-signposted route into a neglected back catalogue and a tasty self-contained appetite-sating feast. Investigate and dig-in without delay.
-Adrian Pannett
11/27/06
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