I have no idea what the deal is between Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips. Upstanding news source that Pitchfork is, I don't want to clog up this space with hearsay, conjecture, rumors, and gossip. But let's consider the evidence for a moment, shall we? Ever since bassist Justin Harwood was traded for Phillips and a record deal to be named later, Luna has been on a late-career roll: Romantica and its little brother Close Cover Before Striking contained some of their finest work in years. Coincidentally, much of the Wareham compositions on these albums were as full of gooey feelings as a Homecoming dance. And after all, Phillips was the voice of Jem-- didn't we all have a little thing for Jem?
Whatever the wink-winks and nudge-nudges of their professional relationship, Wareham and Phillips sound awfully close getting their collab on with L'Avventura. In the valentine vein of Romantica's "Mermaid Eyes", many of the tracks appear in intimate duet form-- less "Don't You Want Me?" than "I Fucking Want You; Get That Fine Ass Over Here". And while the majority of the material covers artists ranging from Madonna to The Doors, they're all run through the Dean-inator: heavy on the wooze and coy, and dolloped with Fridmorchestration like Luna's last two efforts (actually provided here by VH1 trivia answer Tony Visconti).
It's this string section velvet that kicks off L'Avventura, a grandiose atmosphere Wareham immediately undercuts by rhyming "eye" with..."eye." It's this self-effacing panache, with Wareham fully comfortable in his more amicable Lou Reed voice, that makes the album's mushiness palatable-- his sardonic delivery turns a sex-change version of Madonna's "I Deserve It" into something less self-congratulatory and transmutes Buffy St. Marie's anti-NASA protest song "Moonshot" into a fractured fairy-tale.
Britta coos fine curtains over Wareham's lower register on "Hear the Wind Blow", and trades Mary Tyler Moore references on "Ginger Snaps", a lightly danceable counterpart to The Postal Service for the demographic that hasn't yet embraced the laptop as musical instrument. Her own minutes in the spotlight, the self-penned "Out Walking" and "Your Baby", are somewhat less engaging, with Phillips taking on a torch-singer role a bit too familiar next to Wareham's Grandpa Hipster persona. "Knives From Bavaria", a Him song for Her vocals pays off better, with bedroom vocals and flitting drum programming.
Like all Luna family projects, L'Avventura has a sneaky way of getting its claws into you-- background music that gets stuck in your forebrain. But also like most Luna product, this little vacation from the less-talked about half of the band starts to bend under its own uniformity of mood somewhere in the second half, and probably would've been slightly better acclimated to EP length. The Silver Jews cover "Random Rules" is a perfect fit for Wareham's style, but maybe loses half a point for being a bit too easy (and similar to the original); the obscure "Threw It Away" and The Doors' "Indian Summer" both sound slight, with little input from Phillips.
Fortunately, the stronger material on L'Avventura is largely front-loaded, so you can go ahead and doodle on the outer margins of your disc with no great loss. Even with the excess, the album hits the perfect tone for that summer romance you've been planning, or conversely, for inducing ulcer pains and crying fits in the recently dumped. So while it's usually more rewarding to hear a couple going all Stevie & Lindsay through their music, Dean & Britta's Sonny & Cher act is hardly a vanity project between two rock stars that are maybe/maybe-not deep in lurve.
