Some songs are simply too lovely to not let other people know exist.

Background: Dean Wareham was the lead-singer/guitarist for the influential Indie-band Galaxie 500 in the late-80s, before abruptly quitting in 1991. The rhythm section, Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang, were a couple you see; and despite him being the frontman, Wareham was apparently tired of feeling like third-wheel.

Fair enough, I suppose, but he also apparently cut off all contact with them after that^[1]And Dean was high school friends with both. Damon and Naomi are who had to bid on Galaxie 500’s own master-tapes when they were put up for auction in 1991 after their indie-label dissolved. They henceforth became the de facto care-takers for the band’s legacy in the face of Dean’s apparent indifference, as he shifted total focus to his new band Luna instead. Dean eventually came around and started performing Galaxie 500 songs again in the 2010s to the delight of old fans–but notably did not invite Damon and Naomi to join him.

Not that the latter were out of practice; after Dean left, they promptly formed their own Indie-Pop duo called, well, Damon & Naomi. Their debut More Sad Hits was even put out by Sup-Pop Records^[2]The same outfit that first launched Nirvana, and it just might be one of the finest alt-rock albums of the early-’90s (and that’s really saying something). There are in fact numerous Galaxie 500 fans who actually consider Damon & Naomi to be the superior of the two post-breakup groups^[3]myself included, incidentally, and are Exhibit A for how one must never discount the contributions of the rhythm section, because they just might just turn out to be the most important part of the band after all.

But if Dean was ever jealous or annoyed by their critical acclaim or fan love (or even, for kicks and giggles, low-key proud of them), he never let on, or even commented on them, preferring instead to keep doing his own thing in peace.

But he must have been aware of them, because in the early-2000s, after Luna’s break-up, he formed his own Indie-Pop duo called, significantly, Dean & Britta.

His beau Britta Phillips was previously most famous as the singing-voice of Jem on the old ’80s Saturday morning cartoon Jem and the Holograms, of all things. She somehow ended up joining Luna in 1998 as their new bassist; Dean purportedly gave explicit instructions for the rest of the band not to hit on her, to just treat her like another fellow musician. Dean of course failed to follow his own advice, and ended up marrying Britta himself.

And it’s a transformation! Musically, it’s a shot in the arm for him. Part of why I suspect Luna always paled in comparison to Damon & Naomi or Galaxie 500, is simply because Wareham hated to genuinely collaborate: he quit Galaxie 500 because he clearly resented having to work with another couple, and formed Luna to primarily be the Dean Wareham show with a rotating cast of back-up players. Hence there is a solitariness about Luna, a loneliness that can be meditative and resonant, but just as frequently drifts perilously close into blandness. He preferred to keep other people in the background, which ironically resulted in him largely making background music himself.

But with Britta Phillips he was finally, at long last, well into middle-age, collaborating with another full human being again–an indispensable equal–and it finally brings him back to life! On their first album together, 2003’s L’Avventura, I dare say that opening track “Night Nurse” has more vitality and playfulness to it than the entirety of Luna’s catalogue, and was the first time since Galaxie 500’s breakup that he produced anything to rival or even surpass Damon & Naomi. It is a love song, and the best sort of love song: one between two full-grown adults, who are old enough to know themselves as well as they know each other, and who can therefore love each other as well as they love themselves.^[4]This, incidentally, is the argument for letting our YSAs get married in their late-20s and 30s, instead of teens and early-20s, because letting full grown adults court each other results in much … Continue reading

Even when Dean sings seemingly jabbing lines like “You are the splinter in my eye” and “You are the ink stain,” he immediately follows them up by stating with equal conviction, “You make the ice melt, the butter run,” and “You are the One”–which is all just a way of saying that he loves even her faults, or perhaps more precisely, her edges–that is, he loves her as an entire person, as a complete human being, not as some vague, abstract, adolescent ideal.

It feels like there’s an important gospel principle here; because so many of the earliest converts to the LDS Church came from the Protestant tradition, and hence carried with them the Protestant assumption that salvation is a strictly individual affair–that you must leave behind father and mother and brother and sister and husband and wife, to keep you eye fixed upon the Kingdom of God alone.^[5]John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress is therefore part of our literary lineage. And that’s all true to a certain extant. Yet we as a faith also place a heavy emphasis upon genealogy, family history work, “family-centered/church-supported,” “that they without us cannot be saved, nor us without them,” Temple marriages and family sealings for time and all eternity. We are also the Church of the United Order, the City of Zion, Helping Hands, service projects, and Tabernacle Choirs. Even if we don’t consciously realize it or state so, all of our religious behaviors are imbricated in the assumption that we are saved collectively, or not at all.

That is because we are already connected together, and hence we give each other and ourselves life when we focus on strengthening and enabling one another. “When ye are in the service of your fellow being, ye are only in the service of your God,” we like to quote, and it’s true: the more we strengthen and love each other, the more we strengthen and love ourselves. Now, it is certainly easier to go at it alone; it is also less fulfilling, less creative, less interesting. This is what Dean Wareham, I suspect, finally realized when he got together with Britta Phillips. It was when his music finally became genuinely interesting again.