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After three labels in five years, Luna has found a home
for their languid Guitar Rock on Jet Set Records.
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As we near the halfway point in the year's calendar, a definite theme has emerged on 2002's musical landscape: Label turmoil. Don't get me wrong, relations between labels (especially majors) and artists have always been on the testy side -- the art vs. commerce debate will go on forever -- but this year seems especially troublesome. With the label sagas of recent releases like Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and Weezer's Maladroit making as much noise as their excellent new records, something is amiss. What happened to focusing on what really matters -- the music?
Another band dealing with this unfortunate theme is Luna, one of the 1990s finest purveyors of languid guitar Rock -- or as my CityBeat colleague Kathy Y. Wilson puts it, "a bunch of esoteric white boys with guitars."
After spending the early '90s with the major label players at Electra (the label released Luna's first four albums, including their 1995 benchmark, Penthouse), Luna left because, according to frontman and founder Dean Wareham, the band received a statement saying it owed the company over a million dollars.
The band then tried to regroup by releasing their next two efforts on two different independent labels -- critical and commercial reaction was mixed. Even to their devoted cult of like-minded guitar aesthetes, it seemed Luna was slipping from their formerly firm spot on the musical map.
Longtime fans can breathe a sigh of relief. The New York band's latest, the appropriately titled Romantica, is classic Luna, a sophisticated record of warm, reverberating guitars and Wareham's trademark monotone yet strangely hypnotic vocals. Recorded on their own dime with producers Gene Holder (of DB's fame) and Dave Fridmann (Mercury Rev, Flaming Lips) at the controls, Romantica is a much more raw -- and yes -- less esoteric affair than their last two studio efforts. Following the recording of Romantica at Fridmann's upstate New York studio, the band shopped the record around, finally settling on small, New York indie, Jet Set Records.
"So far it's working out pretty good," says guitarist Sean Eden by phone from his apartment deep in the heart of Manhattan. "We've had a lot of upheaval the last couple of years because the last studio album, The Days of Our Nights, was on a label called Jericho, which went under. Well, they didn't really go under; their main backer sort of pulled the plug earlier than he said he might. So we got jerked around by them -- they (Jericho) actually owed us money, but declared bankruptcy," says Eden, clearly getting riled up over the thought. "It's a problem because that record went out of print and they won't give us back the rights to the masters. So they told us if we want the masters rights back, we have to buy it from them. It's just like totally insane. And the thing is, the guy fronting all the money, he's like a billionaire. I don't think he knows how screwed over we got. I'm trying to figure out a way to get a hold of him. He lives in Virginia somewhere."
Luckily, Luna's label woes have done little to erode the band's creative skills. Romantica once again finds the band indulging in the blissful dueling guitar lines of Wareham and Eden and a subtle yet supple rhythm section courtesy of drummer Lee Wall and newly enlisted bass player Britta Phillips. The addition of Phillips on Romantica has not only brought a new aesthetic sensibility to the band, but more importantly -- with her seductive backing coos and dreamy duet with Wareham on "Mermaid Eyes" -- a new dimension to the band's sound, a sound Eden is eager to take to the road.
"We're all pretty psyched about it," he says. "We haven't been to some of these places in a long time, and I think it's going to be good audience-wise because we haven't done a lengthy tour in like two years."
Speaking of touring, the lone beacon of light on Luna's dark horizon the past few years was the release of their live record, the imaginatively titled Live, in 2001.
"We were certainly happy about the response, and it sold pretty well," says Eden. "Another good thing about it selling pretty well is that because we did it on Arena Rock, our friend Greg's label, we made royalties off the record, which we'd never done before. People don't realize that unless you're a really big band, you don't make money from record sales. Coming off the bullshit thing on The Days of Our Nights, the live record definitely raised our spirits."
Another "bullshit thing" that gets Eden riled up is the current state of commercial radio, a place where Luna is conspicuously absent.
"Clear Channel must be destroyed," says Eden firmly. "I'm saying that, and we're playing in a Clear Channel-owned club tomorrow night. They own radio stations, they own clubs, and they own some booking agencies. So they basically -- whether they're exercising it in a really bad way or not -- they certainly do have monopoly power in some markets.
"And radio is so screwed. What is it, like three companies own 95 percent of the radio stations in the United States? I read somewhere that more than 50 percent of commercial radio stations in the U.S. now have a play list at any given time of 25 songs or less. That is insane. It freaks me out.
"The whole lowest common denominator demographic associated with the attitudes and so-called science behind all that radio stuff, I think it's insulting to the general public. I think people are open to, and want, newer things. The intense commercialism of a lot of the music coming out right now basically is going to play itself out. The Britney Spears and *NSYNC stuff, there's eventually going to be a cultural backlash against that, if it hasn't started happening already."
Armed with their Velvet Underground/Television-infused guitar work (now an established Luna cliché, but what are you gonna do, it's accurate) and Wareham's Paul Auster influenced tales of Gotham nightlife, Luna is a quintessential New York band. Which brings us to the inevitable question of Sept. 11 and its impact, given the band played at the World Trade Center just one month before the attacks.
"We've got all these photographs (of the show), and there was this big stage set up right in front of one of the towers, and you can see the towers in the background," says Eden, clearly struggling to find the words to match his feelings.
"We were all just as freaked out about it as everybody else. It's hard for me to say how we were affected. My girlfriend and me could see it from our window as it was happening ... it's been a slow sort of progression of feelings and reflections about it. Sometimes I'm still sort of seized with the horror of it, and the magnitude. It's just weird. When I take a cab across one of the bridges back into Manhattan from Brooklyn it's strange to look at the downtown skyline, it gives you this really weird hallow feeling. But overall, things are actually pretty upbeat in New York right now."
Like the city they call home, things are also pretty upbeat for Luna. The band has outlasted many of the aforementioned intensely commercial artists during their 10-year existence, a fact only accentuated by the completion and release of Romantica.
"It's just a matter for us of getting excited about doing new material, 'cause we never have a set plan when we're working on new stuff," says Eden. "We're always toying around with new things. And unlike a lot of bands -- of course we have our difficulties and unpleasant exchanges sometimes -- but generally we get along and have a good time and try not to get too freaked out about anything or the business aspect of things. I think sometimes bands get wrapped up in so many different things that aren't about the music, and I think that tends to drag a lot of bands down after awhile. So yeah, things are good for us right now."
LUNA plays in the Southgate House ballroom on Wednesday.
