Dean Wareham –
Dean Wareham
Dean Wareham, who may set the standard for handsome faces of
the middle-aged indie circuit, is now 50 years old. And although his sugared melodies and honeyed
voice have dominated the recordings of his multiple prior professional
associations, his first proper solo album now officially exists. He has enlisted no airs with a choice of
title. He has wasted no misdirection in
opening lyrics:
I was the
arrow,
I was the
bow,
I loved it
here but I’m ready to go,
Now that
we’re here I’m ready to leave
This whole
wide world behind.
So it begins with “The Dancer Disappears,” and it makes
maximum sense that this restless bard used the first lines of the leadoff track
of his first ever solo album to announce his readiness to move on. Wareham’s modus operandi has always been a
far-seeing march onward—even if forever fewer colleagues seem capable of
keeping up with him.
His route of passage has narrowed with each successive
mile. When Wareham set sail in the music
biz years ago, it was as part of the loveably lo-fi (but expansively monikered)
band Galaxie 500 of the late 1980s. As
was evidently the tradition between 1988 and 1993, the impact of this
unassuming band and its three unassuming albums was much greater than billed. It took a while, but ten years later the
world was chock full of bands trying to sound as languidly perfect as Galaxie
500 once were. And of course Galaxie 500
were by then very long gone.
Wareham spent most of the 1990s and early 2000s as the voice
out in front of new band Luna, who were less lo-fi but still seriously,
wonderfully weird. Luna’s songs were
both bigger and—perhaps owing to better playing and better recording—more splendidly
delicate than those of Wareham’s earlier band.
Once again, in a genius’ triumph of asynchrony, the results were better
than, and out of step with, the standards of the time. Luna was more or less a prototypical “indie”
band in the age of “alternative” rock, if one will permit the indulgence of a distinction.
By the time the world came to grips with melodic,
intelligent and purposefully diminutive rock music, Wareham had moved on,
again. He spent the better part of the
2000s narrowing focus a bit more, and lowering the volume: lining up a songwriting partnership with Luna
bandmate and wife Britta Phillips, and completing several (more) quiet and
appealing releases as Dean & Britta.
Which brings us to 2014…more than a quarter-century after
Galaxie 500 first appeared in the lenses of earthly telescopes.
We are “now in the twilight of the psychedelic years,” is
how Wareham puts it in “The Dancer Disappears.” This is probably the wishful thinking of a
guy whose measured and concise songs of love and longing have always been just
a bit too measured and concise for the world around them—while all the while
growing more measured and more concise.
The elder statesman vibe of hopeful “I told you so” prognostication is
just getting warmed up…on follow up track “Beat the Devil” we learn, “The
Golden Age is in us / only to be learned / waiting for the tables to be
turned.” This is what the narrator
claims is “the high road” to the sea, en route to beating the Devil “at his
game.” It all starts to taste like the presumed
sweetness of just desserts.
There is a rich and colorful cornucopia of flourishes on Dean Wareham, and while Wareham’s work
remains unassailably unique, and his lazy-sweet aesthetic specific to him
alone, it can be quite fun to witness how near his muse comes to some erstwhile
and current contemporaries. The
whittled-down core of his album is somewhere near third track “Heartless People,”
whose smoky guitar and vocal—and late blush of pedal steel—sound gloriously
like a track from Cowboy Junkies’ The
Trinity Session.
Three tracks later, and before Wareham’s hilariously awkward
falsetto diverts from the parallel, “Holding Pattern” launches sounding every
bit like a winning cut from a Sambassadeur album—one can only hope against hope
that the song functions in the manner of a duck call, and that the latter band
take flight again from their Scandinavian home to investigate. With a desperately-hoped-for new album under
wing.
The similarities don’t end there. After a smoldering and deliberate
introduction, “Babes In the Wood” unleashes a driving beat the second time
through the chorus, which combined with a more refined (and multi-tracked) take
on that falsetto, yields a result that sounds stunningly like a random song
from The Besnard Lakes. In sum, one
could do worse with the summoning of likenesses than Wareham has done with
these three. The album congeals well
enough that none of it seems nicked—just the inevitably divergent gatherings of
a wide-ranging mind.
If “Heartless People” was the core of Dean Wareham, closing track “Happy and Free” seems to tally both
the entire album and the man’s career.
At six-minutes-plus, it doesn’t rush.
The melody is perfect and the song is constructed with loving attention
to detail. “Stars shine, faintly blowing
through the nighttime air.” And a
parting reminder about how this all works:
“There’s nothing wrong with the road we’re on / searching,
searching.” This is the Wareham
permanent and restless status quo:
“happy and free…for a while.”
Stars shine, faintly blowing through the nighttime air. In the years since 1990, the musical universe
has accumulated a wonderful night sky plurality of near-solitary indie
minstrels. While Beck may have combusted
and turned to pop culture dust in a vast magnesium flare, plenty of others have
strummed warmly and quietly ever on:
Eel’s Mark Everett; Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt; Death Cab’s Ben
Gibbard.
Ever since Galaxie 500 happened, it has been challenging and
fun to think seriously about where the collected accomplishments of Dean
Wareham fit in the grand scheme of the American indie universe. Is he a prime mover? A lesser angel? One cannot help but think of Pluto, far out
there and regularly re-sorted as either a planet, or just a big rock. One cannot help but think of Pluto. Whatever it is, it remains out there. Happy and free. For a while.
Keepers 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9
May 2014
