Raise your hand if you miss Luna. No, don't raise them if you merely like Luna, or if you think fondly of Luna. Only raise them if you really, really, truly miss Luna since the group went gently into the good night. No? No one? Okay, a couple of hands.
That's not to say there's nothing to miss. At their best Luna were absolutely lovely, with Dean Wareham's sleepy songs, sinewy guitar playing and "you can do this, too!" nasal singing voice a justification for abandoning Galaxie 500 at the peak of their powers. But if Galaxie 500 were a (somewhat dysfunctional) group, Luna always appeared to be Wareham first and foremost, with various friends and allies grouped around him. Lest you forget, the first Luna album originally went out credited as a Wareham solo project before a proper moniker was chosen and Luna was promoted as a group.
Dean & Britta, as the billing obviously imparts, is neither a group nor a solo project. Rather, it's a duo comprising Dean Wareham and former Luna bassist Britta Phillips, who married during the recording of Back Numbers, their second full-length album. In the past Wareham has cited the distracting romantic relationship between Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang as a reason for leaving Galaxie 500, so who knows? Maybe Wareham's relationship with Phillips portended the end of Luna as well. Over the course of Back Numbers the pair is abetted by a handful of guests (including buddy and peer Sonic Boom) plus the able hands of producer Tony Visconti, who produced the couple's 2003 offering L'Avventura. That disc seemed a little like a side project, not just because Luna still hung over Wareham's head, but due to the relatively laid back and informal nature of the disc.
Back Numbers, in fact, hones rigidly close to the template of all previous Dean & Britta releases-- a handful of originals and more than a handful of choice covers. But the disc also marks the sound of Wareham confidently moving forward, with Phillips at his side. And she is at his side, too: This is less Wareham +1 than it is the sound of true collaboration, and as such it sounds like more than just Luna minus the name.
It also sounds, like those previous releases, pretty casual-- or, less charitably, pretty insubstantial. Track by track, the disc's a sweet thing, but as a whole it's about as light and wispy. Part of the problem is that the emphasis is mostly on the cover songs. Here the choice selections include "Teen Angel", a Donovan B-side, and "White Horses", allegedly the theme to an obscure children's TV show, each given an equally mellow reading. Even wild things the Troggs (as redoubtable a source for cover material as any) are given the comfy pillow treatment with Dean & Britta's version of their "Our Love Will Still Be There". No surprise, then, that Lee Hazlewood's "You Turned My Head Around" (originally sung by that legendary set of pipes Ann Margret) is an early standout, if only because it's a song that finally nudges Britta out of her box, where she's allowed to belt instead of coo.
Despite all the standout covers, four of the album's strongest tracks are Dean & Britta originals, albeit originals of a distinctly second-hand nature. "Words You Used to Say" (from last year's EP of the same name) is like Luna gone totally weightless. "Wait for Me" is a sleepy (naturally) waltz recycled from the soundtrack to Olivier Assayas's Clean, now featuring a resplendent turn by Britta doing her best Neko Case impression. "The Sun is Still Sunny" is a duet that grew from Wareham's The Squid and the Whale score. "Crystal Blue R.I.P.", with Wareham on lead and a true, new original, is as gorgeous a track as he has ever been connected to; Wareham claims it's a eulogy for a friend's dead bunny.
Yet those nice additions to the Wareham/Phillips oeuvre are such that one wishes the two spent a little more time working on their own songs than they did working on the songs of other people. Not that they sound like they worked that hard on them, mind you. Dean & Britta's good taste pushes them to cool material that does all the heavy lifting for them, essentially allowing them to sleepwalk through their own respective duties. Maybe they had a train to catch. Maybe they were off to their honeymoon. But given that Back Numbers is Wareham and Phillips' symbolic post-Luna debut, it sounds paradoxically rushed and slapped together for an otherwise dreamy affair.
