Earshifter
So much great music gets lost in the cracks. Join us at Earshifter where we feature artists (old and new) often overlooked by the masses and radio. We’ll talk about what makes the band great and different, their background and their bestest-est songs.
Earshifter is ultimately about two things: music discovery OR if you love the feature artist in an episode, going deep on that band you love.
Earshifter
Luna
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Luna - the 1990s dream-pop architects dubbed "the best band you've never heard of." Sean and Rene unpack how Lou Reed hand-picked them to open The Velvet Underground’s 1993 European reunion tour, the delicate beauty of "Anesthesia" and Sean's 30-year concert loop at Lee's Palace. Plus, why Dean Wareham is indie rock’s patron saint of elegant underachievement and Luna remains the ultimate soundtrack for thoughtful music obsessives.
Apple Music Songs Playlist
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, follow us to learn more about past and upcoming episodes, and the artists we cover.
Instagram: @earshifterpodcast
TikTok: @earshifter
Facebook: @earshifterpodcast
Welcome to your shifter. He's Sean Capstick. And he's Renee Roulot. And Renee, please tell us why are we here? Sean, we're here for two reasons. One, you like said band. Guess what? You're gonna learn a bunch about said band. Two, you never heard of this band? You're gonna learn about this band, and maybe, who knows, you'll actually become a fan of theirs.
SPEAKER_00And I think three, so we can listen to bands that maybe have dropped off of our rotation, something out of the past a little bit, something that makes you, hey, let's listen to this band. And because we have a podcast, we get to talk about the band.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we get to use the excuse to listen to the band again. Which brings us to this band, Sean.
SPEAKER_00What's this band all about? Well, this band was really important in the 90s and the aughts. I listened to them a lot, and they never totally dropped out of circulation. They broke up end of the 2009 or something, and then they reformed in 2015. I saw them in 2015. Uh, and I'm gonna see them again. It's the band called Luna, and I saw them on touring their second album way back in the day, probably you know, what what would that be? 30 years ago. And see, and then the music still resonates.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and you saw them at Lee's Palace, right? I saw them at Lee's Palace. And then I think you're gonna see them again at the Palace.
SPEAKER_00And I'm gonna see them again at Lee's Palace. Yes, pretty well. So, you know, what comes around goes around, that's for sure. Okay, so let's get into the band before we hear their music. They were a supergroup of sorts back in the 90s. So the band, and they've changed a little bit over time, but Dean Wareham has been the main guy. He's the singer, guitarist, he was born in New Zealand, grew up in New York, and he's ex Galaxy 500.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00Justin Harwood played bass up until 1999, and he was ex chills.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Uh Stanley Dembsky was drums in the early era, and he's ex-Feelys. And then in 1993, they were joined on uh guitar by a guy named Sean Eden, and uh I don't know what bands he was in before then, but he was born in Canada, grew up in Texas, and then Lee Wall has taken over drumming from 1999, uh '97 onward, and Brita Phillips has played bass since 1999 as well. And she was a musician, an actress, and a voiceover, uh cartoon voiceover star in her own right before she joined the band.
SPEAKER_01That's cool. And Galaxy 500, for me, is the most famous of all those bands, Feelies and Chills. And they were quite popular, Galaxy 500 back in the day.
SPEAKER_00Do you want to get into the prehistory? Because I want to say a little bit about all of those bands. Or do you want to hear I think maybe their best song? Um what do you want to do?
SPEAKER_01I want to hear a song.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so well, the first thing to introduce this song, the first thing I gotta say about this song is in 1993, Luna was invited by Lou Reed to be the opening act for Velvet Underground's reunion tour through Europe. So, Renee, I got a question. Is it better to regret what you have done or you haven't?
SPEAKER_01I think what you have done, it's better to regret what you have done.
SPEAKER_00I think so too, but somehow 93. Like, you know, we were living our lives, we didn't have kids, we could have popped off to Europe anytime we wanted.
SPEAKER_01Why didn't we go? Because we had no money.
SPEAKER_00Ah, okay. Maybe that's yeah. Probably. Yeah. That we couldn't just pop off to Europe and see them the Velvets play.
SPEAKER_01That would have been amazing. I didn't even know about that until you were just saying it now. Yeah, no, no.
SPEAKER_00I remember looking at it, going, I'm regretting not being there right now. But that'd be so cool. Uh so on that tour, of course, uh Wareham met all of the the Velvets, but he picked up a friendship with Sterling Morrison, who is the second guitarist in the Velvet Underground, and he plays on this song called Friendly Advice off their second album, Bewitched. Awesome. All right, let's hear it.
SPEAKER_05Cover my face with the roses, cover the head to toe. You wanted to give me some friendly advice.
SPEAKER_00That was all right, I'm gonna get so that's just like a classic six-minute song, and it fades out with them just going ba over the distinctive velvety guitar. I was gonna say just such a beautiful song.
SPEAKER_01It's so velvet underground, it's wild. Like in a best way possible.
SPEAKER_00And that's not a bad thing. No, that's not a bad thing. Okay, so let's get into explore a little bit more about that pre-history. So I don't know. We can maybe let's not start with Galaxy 500, right? So let's start with the Feelies, right? So do you remember the Feelys? I do not. I know of I remember of them, but I don't remember hearing any of it. So they have a song that gets played on my algorithm that I appreciate called Crazy Rhythm. And they were a New Jersey indie hero band from 76 to 92, right? They reunited a number of times and they played a number of shows, and I think this will be a theme for this episode. In 2005, they released a Velvet Underground cover album from a live show, and it's just a fine little like sing-along with the Velvets they do like uh a lot of the songs off that uh Peel Slowly and C album. They do a few of the other cuts. It's a nice, it's a nice little live record. So the Chills. The Chills are a New Zealand band, and they formed even earlier. They formed in in 1980, and they've reformed a number of times over the years. Continue to go on after Martin Phillips' death in 2004. And they have a distinctive sound. Pink frost, I love my leather jacket is one of the songs that that they did and has been covered by a lot of people because who doesn't love a leather jacket at some point in your life if you haven't loved your leather jacket that maybe you really haven't loved? Sorry, PET. Sorry, PETA. But amongst some sensitive replacement fans, I think the Chills could be considered even a more iconic band than Luna. So they've got a big following. And then Renee, did Chloe ever watch Gem? No. The cartoon Gem? I think it's a little bit, it was probably a well, I mean, it it's before her time, but maybe she watched it in reruns. I never heard of it. Oh, it's I didn't watch it, but I knew of it. It's a cartoon series that revolves around Jessica Benton, the owner and manager of Starlight Music and her alter ego, Jem. Jem is a lead singer of an all-female rock group, Gem and the Holograms. And this is where it gets fuzzy. Jessica adopts the persona of Jem with the help of a holographic computer known as Synergy, and that was built by Jessica's father and bequeathed to her after her death. And she there's a bad all German girl band that they kind of have to foil their plans, and there's a song each one. And the reason I mention it is because Britta Phillips was the voice of Jem.
SPEAKER_01Fun.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And her other claim to fame is she co-starred in the teen rock band Satisfaction, which I don't remember. It wasn't my teens, but it was that movie also starred Justine Bateman and Julia Roberts' first major screen play. So that's pretty cool. Yeah. So uh yeah, so Phillips comes from from from a different history. And then okay, we can mention the Galaxy 500. So do you know what a Galaxy 500 is? No, it is an iconic Ford coupe. I think it also came in four-door that in my vague memory was the car that my dad owned when he died. Oh because there was like this big Ford 500 in our driveway for a long time before my mom sold it and bought a smaller car that she had.
SPEAKER_01So it was like one of those old 70s boats. Yeah. Yeah. Very much a 70s boat.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. But that was the name of Wareham's first major band. They were a reverb-saturated, woozy, slow-paced three-piece. And they wrote some iconic songs for Joe, our sound engineer. They did a great cover of Ceremony that I put on our playlist, cheating a little bit. Yes. Okay, we'll give it to you, bud. Uh Luna Besties that we'll put uh ceremony. And their first song was called Tugboat. And he goes on in his nasally voice, going, I just want to be your tugboat captain. And that's what Sterling Morrison did after the Velvet Undergrounds. He was a New York City tugboat captain.
SPEAKER_01No way.
SPEAKER_00Maybe it's not an apocryphal tale, but that's what I believe. Wow.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, so that's where they came from. And then in 1991, they released an album called Luna Park. And they were Luna Squared at this time because there was a folk artist named Luna. Always one, right? That I guess they did agree with at the end and said, Well, you we can both be Luna. I think people the world's big enough for two Lunas. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But only one moon. So I gotta go into the producers. I'm gonna go pretty deep. Okay. Fred Mayer. No recollection. So he's an American drummer who was in Scritti Polity.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god.
SPEAKER_00I always thought Scritty Polity was uh British. Maybe he moved to the UK. Yeah, but I mean that uh Scritty Polity, they had such a funny name. But aside from that little fun fact, he also played drums on Lou Reed's Legendary Hearts, New Sensations, and then he produced on the amazing New York album. So he's got some some progressive shots. He's got some shots, and you're a fan for sure. I'm a fan. He worked with Robert Quine, who was the ex voivoids. Right. And uh also played with Lou. And he produced Lloyd Cole. Oh, very nice. Matthew Sweet. Which wine rattlesnakes? We don't know. We don't know. Yeah, sorry, I should have I should have gone that deep because I was looking at it. No. He's done a fair bit of stuff with Lloyd Cole. He produced Matthew Sweet's girlfriend. Oh nice. The Breeders and many others. And I would say what's interesting about this is that they followed a pattern over the years that they released the album and then they released an EP to go along with it. And this would again again have been back when that was vinyl. And so the EP contained kind of slightly different versions of the original cuts off the album and their tradition of covers. Dean Wareham loves covers. And you know who else loves covers? I know you like covers when it's different. That's the way I like it, when the band puts their own take on the cover.
SPEAKER_01But I would say you like most covers. Like you're a big, you love covers. I love covers okay.
SPEAKER_00I think it's such an interesting way of representing yourself and your influences, and then bringing, yeah, a different thing to uh to a band that maybe people haven't heard of.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, shining a light on a band that's overlooked. Oh wow, that sounds familiar, shifter.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Okay, but let's play one of Luna's original songs. This is again early Luna. It's called Anesthesia off there, Luna Park. All right, let's hear it.
SPEAKER_03I see you waking up, and a five day is on you. The parties of now.
SPEAKER_01Like it's just so it's like they inflect on the end, it's like positive and up. Anesthesia. Yeah, it's nice.
SPEAKER_00And it was almost a mon green, but I had to look it up because I was thinking, and I tried to freeze you, but you're under anesthesia, but it's I tried to please you. Okay. And then you're he does. Do you want to say what a mongreen is again? A mon green is where you misinterpret the lyrics, usually to great comedic device for everybody else around you, but you, and then you insist, no, that is the way that they actually write. Until you're proven wrong, until you're proven wrong.
SPEAKER_01Or you decide, no, my lyrics better. But yeah, totally better.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. All right, awesome. So yeah, that's great. And again, I'll point out because I think I'll come back to this, that on that slide EP, they do a great cover of Rided to the Sun, which is a uh deep Velvets track, and heavily influenced by the Dream Syndicate, they do a great Dream Syndicate cover on that as well. Again, starting a great trend. Okay, so 94. Bewitched comes out, and so this was the album that I just totally couldn't get enough on. That this was really from beginning to end, and I'm not gonna put all of the Bewitched songs on our playlist, but I would encourage people to just listen to that album. That was good. That's what where friendly advice came from. And so this album was produced by Victor Van Good. So he's an Australian music producer and engineer who worked with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. He produced The Good Sun and Murder Balance. He was the engineer on Billy Bragg's Don't Try This At Home. He produced PJ's Harvey's Stories from the City from the Sea. I had to look up all of these ones because yeah, these are super important albums to be the Mohawk 3, which is way back from your day, just to name a few.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, the we heard that. Let's keep going because we don't get bogged down playing every single song and discussing which one is more beautiful than the last. Then they came out with Penthouse, Hot on the Heels of Bewitched Penthouse. And so this was really where they got a lot of critical acclaim. And so this one, again, I gotta go through the producer, Patrick McCarthy. He's a record producer for Dublin, Ireland, who most notably took over producing REM from Scott Litt. So remember all of those early REM albums, the great REM albums like Murmur and stuff? Yeah, were produced by this guy, Scott Litt. Okay. And so he he mixed Monster and then New Adventures in Hi-Fi, but I think he took over from Up. But he also engineered U2, Madonna.
SPEAKER_01So he did up or didn't do up?
SPEAKER_00He he took over on Up.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I like that. That is an underrated album, Up. I like that album.
SPEAKER_00And we were talking about the Waterboys in the last episode. Yeah, I love the Water Boys. So he engineered and played on Fisherman's Blues. Nice. Yeah. And inexplicably, his song credit productions also include the best of David Wilcox. Okay. That's weird. So and David Wilcox will not feature on Earshifter, but for listeners who just don't understand the incongruity on that, David Wilcox was a bar, a successful bar band musician who made a career by doing double entendres in his music. In Canada, right? In Canada, he's a Canadian, yeah. Canadian, yeah. One of our prouder ones. Ah, you know what? I listened to him at a whole bunch of parties in university, and it was tolerable. It was better than other, it was better than Bob Seeger. Yeah, all right, maybe. Yeah. So again, the influences, the wearing that very clearly, Tom Verlaine from television plays on this album. That's cool. And will you let me play some of the doo-wop on this track on Moon Palace, please, for our listeners? Absolutely, Sean. But is that the part of the track you want to play? Let's hear Moon Palace and just a little bit of the doo-wop. Okay. All right, let's hear it.
SPEAKER_05What is it don't understand?
SPEAKER_01Okay, I'm excited because uh here's the thing, Sean. I'd made a note about this one. I seem to have a thing about animals because I thought it was meow, meow, meow, meow. And then if you remember Kevin Morby, I thought it was dogs barking on the one side.
SPEAKER_00But it's hey, hey, and it's meah, meow. But I like my version. You like your mongrene? Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I like to think it's meow, meow, meow.
SPEAKER_00You be you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, as long as it makes you happy. I talked to Kevin Morby. He said it is dogs barking. Okay, well, I stand correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Anyway, no, it's a nice song. It's so like that whole. And the I remember in Lee's Palace, they were in meow or meowing, and uh the whole crowd went quiet and they stopped meowing, and everybody was quiet, and they said, Look at all the polite Canadians. I remember that distinctly, yes. On brand for sure. On brand. We don't know when to clap when the song finishes. Yeah. Okay, so Pop Tent is not on my streaming service. A lot of good songs on that. I would play that. I put one of the greatest hits on our list. But let's go now in '97 to 2004. They kind of dropped off Electra Records. They went to a more independent records jet set, and they released three albums: The Days of Our Nights, Romantica, and Rendezvous. So I'll stop talking about producers and the sense of time and great detail, but these albums feature a guy from Mercury Rev and a guy who worked on slanted energy.
SPEAKER_01Whoa. That's pavement, people.
SPEAKER_00So yes. So these are good songs, they're great. They have a uh Uh a song called Renee Is Crying and a song called Swedish Fish.
SPEAKER_01Is it Renee with two E's? It's always Renee with two E's. Uh it's always three E's, yes, yeah. You've got two E's. What's wrong with two E's?
SPEAKER_00So maybe that's where Parquet Courts got their songs, or at least their titles. And again, they kept putting out uh EPs, so uh I want to go in terms of the deep cut because I had the EP that went along with Romantica, and Romantica featured a lighter on the front cover, and their following EP was called Close Cover Before Striking. Oh, nice. So for younger listeners, yeah. That was the safety advice on a pack of matches. Yeah. So the kind of it was.
SPEAKER_01Can you even get a pack of matches anymore? Like a standard restaurant pack of matches? I don't think so. I don't think so.
SPEAKER_00I was I went to I went to a uh a wedding for the first time in a long time, and they didn't give out matches, they gave out pottery. My god. Yeah, what's the world coming to Sean? How times change? Come on now. So let's play, I think, my third favorite song about astronauts. Let's play Astronaut. All right, let's hear it.
SPEAKER_01Okay, another pretty song, but more importantly, Sean, what are those other two astronaut songs? And before you answer, I think one of them is from the National.
SPEAKER_00Yes, we're looking for astronauts. The alligator, that's that is gonna be my favorite astronaut song. What's the other one? Well, then it's debatable because they're the Nekons have a great song about astronauts. The Long Winters have a song about the boys and girls and cars and astronauts. So maybe after the first one, all the astronauts are all pretty good songs. Yeah, but I mean I the national for sure.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Way up there. That is a good yeah.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so that EP also has covers of Waiting on a Friend and your favorite Alice Cooper, only Women Bleed.
SPEAKER_01Okay, well, not my favorite, but yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's you know what? I we we joked about it on the last episode, but it's actually a nice song, and it's a really sensitive song about abuse and uh raising issues, and uh, you know, and uh agree.
SPEAKER_01I just think it has better ballads. We could do a whole episode on Alice Cooper except we can't. Except we can't. Yeah, we're not gonna.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it violates our own internal rules. That's right. Okay, so they broke up after uh they figured everything was done after rendezvous, and he called it quits with Luna. But Phillips, so he had asked what was originally gonna be a Wareham solo project. He got Phillips to do some demos, and the story goes he liked the demo so much he asked her to join the band. And that was their first like duo uh called La Ventura. But now I gotta go back to talk about producers. Okay, I'm you know, so you should know this guy, Tony Visconti.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah, yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_00So he produced their first little EP, right? So for listeners, Tony Visconti produced like all of the great T-Rex albums. We talked about him on our episode on Sparks because he produced Indiscreet, he produced Piggy Pop The Stranglers. Yeah, he's all over the place, eh? And some other artist, David Bowie, he produced all of those great Bowie albums in the 70s as well.
SPEAKER_01Oh, did he? Oh shit, I should have known that. 100% should have known that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah. So uh they continued on Jet Sets, it was originally under Britta Phillips and Dean Wareham. And so here's a bit of a deep cut that you may not know this. But Peter Kembler. Is that a name? No, aka Sonic Boom, founding member, vocalist guitarist of the neopsychedelic band Spaceman Three. I remember you loving Spaceman Three back in the day. Am I mistaken? I might be hallucinating, you might be hallucinating. Maybe we're both AI, I don't know. Okay, well, I'm gonna have to go start to listen to Spaceman Three again because maybe it was me who loved Space 3. But I was Mojave 3.
SPEAKER_01You definitely introduced me to Mojave 3, I remember that.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so um he liked the the that first record by Dean and British so much that he produced a an LP called Sonic Souvenirs, which was just a whole remix of that. Oh yeah, I gotta also mention Spaceman 3 took me off. He also produced Beast House album seven. Whoa, cool. He worked with some guy named Kevin Shields. Jesus and Pat Fish of The Jazz Butcher. Wow. Wow, yeah. So he gets around. Yeah, this guy Kempler gets around.
SPEAKER_01And apparently ageless or something, or some sort of vampire.
SPEAKER_00He sucks, he sucks the life out of all of the people he produces. And you said T-Rex, right? Like that's no, that was Visconti. Oh no, I confused the two, okay? Never mind. Yeah. Okay, so again, I won't play it because this is a Luna episode, but that Dean and Brita took the dream pop even further, and I put a couple of the songs on there. On the Sonic Souvenirs, I remember I can't find it on the souvenir on the streaming service. They did a remix of ginger snaps. The original's pretty good, but again, the the remix just is even more spacey and beautiful. But yeah, listeners, give yourself the rhyming couplets of ginger snaps.
SPEAKER_01Can we can't we just cheat and hear you turn my head around? Because I really like that one. Oh, isn't that a pretty song?
SPEAKER_00You could put that on your playlist, on your total playlist. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Do you want to hear just a little bit? Okay. All right, let's do it.
SPEAKER_06Let's do it and watch the sweet smile. My eyes were flying you too. I said I never killed me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that chorus break or pre-chorus breakout is just amazing. Obviously, it gives Bjork like big time, right? Like, but it is absolutely incredible. Does she do a lot of that, or is it that a very unique song for her?
SPEAKER_00She sings most like more than 50% in my recollection of those Dean and Britta songs. And yeah, she's got an amazing voice. Nice. Now it makes makes me want to go see what the gem cartoons. Watch them on YouTube. Okay, so that's Wareham's main outlet right now. They have done film scores, The Squid and the Whale. Um that's a great movie. I knew you'd like that. They've done promoting documentary films of their own tour, right? Their uh their farewell tour back in the day. And in their recording of their record Back Numbers, which is also produced by Visconti, they got married. Oh wow. Yeah, so that's kind of a cute thing, yes. And and they continue to collaborate, and Wareham released an album last year that to great critical acclaim, and they play together. They are a nice team. Yeah. So in 2015, Luna reunited. And so I remember, I can't, I don't recall who I went and saw this show, but I distinctly remember seeing them in October of 2015 at the Dan Forth Music Hall. And I was so happy to be, oh, I get to see Luna again.
SPEAKER_01Was it crowded or it was busy?
SPEAKER_00It was busy, yeah.
SPEAKER_01It holds like 800 somewhere. Yeah, a thousand, maybe.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and it was but it was a great show. I remember go, you know, singing all the good songs and being really, really happy after seeing them again and thinking, okay, that's great. They released as part of their reunion, they released a full album of covers called A Sentimental Education. And they also released a fully instrumental album called A Place of Greater Safety.
SPEAKER_01Is it ambient music?
SPEAKER_00It is. I think you'd like it. Um yeah, I mean, I put one of the songs on the playlist. But yeah, take check that out. Like it's uh it isn't totally speculated.
SPEAKER_01Is it more like a feel good lost, like broken social scene, feel good lost?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's more upbeat, but like uh it's no Godspeed you black emperor, right, right spaced out stuff. But yeah, it's it's nice. Uh Wareham says on Luna, they're a band who plays their classic material, occasionally record covers, tours because they enjoy it, and does not feel the pressure to make new Luna albums. So that's fine, right? But he's left the door open if the right songs somehow appear and he feels that they're uh a Luna songs. Luna songs, but you know, he's uh it's great. And and I think he's taken this elder statesman type role within this indie pop, you know, uh we keep saying the songs are beautiful. But I think he's got a great place, he's very very well respected by people who know there. And I think it's great that they're touring. Again, another thing about regretting now that the they played, we should follow these bands, and when we can go travel to certain places in the world again, that'll be great. Because they just played a uh a show in New York and they were joined by Steve Wynne from The Dream Syndicate, that song that I played, you know, highlighted in their first thing. And uh yeah, they had a great time, and just so you know, indie rock darlings who are still rocking out and they still they're still actively playing. So I'm excited, really excited to see them when they come back. I'm excited for you, bud. Yeah, so let's play one of the covers from Sentimental Education. Let's play Car Wash Hair. Now, do you remember that song back in the day?
SPEAKER_01I enjoyed this song, so I didn't even know it was a cover, and I enjoyed the song quite a bit. Like, I like that song, it's good.
SPEAKER_00It's so crazy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so let's hear it.
SPEAKER_04Number two is gonna make a few.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Mercury Rev being a band from upstate New York. And yeah, I mean, I don't know what car wash hair is, but I want to rub my hands through it as well. It's such a beautiful, haunting song. Yeah, like that that CD from that came back and from back in the day. We I played that a lot at the cottage. So, and there's a whole bunch more. Check out the uh the the tracks. I have I'm surprised you're not talking about the I'm so bored with the USA cover that they do.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, dude, I'm such a clash fan, so that was a bit problematic for me because I didn't that's not my favorite Luna song or Brita and Dean and Britta song either, but I love that they made it their own.
SPEAKER_00I mean their own and you can understand all of the lyrics. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, Joe Strummer sang it back in the day. Yeah, yeah. That was from the quarantine tapes, where I guess they were bored and just recording stuff at home. So yeah, good for them. They just, you know, they come back and keep going, and that's wonderful. Yeah. Okay. Why are they an airshifter band, Renee?
SPEAKER_01I mean, I think they were pioneers, right? Like they literally were, if not started a very early start on the whole dream pop genre, right? So I'd say they're 100% an earshifter band, and they have 170,000 monthly listeners, which clearly they deserve way more than that.
SPEAKER_00I think so. I think that so I think he's a connector to all of our earshifter bands, right? His influences and his influence is way less than the fabled sixth degree of separation. I think if most, if not all, the bands we feature or likely to feature in the future are gonna have some connection to a producer, to a somebody that the cover they've done, that there's something that he's really that that kind of um, you know, and people write about him, right? And people write about the bands. For example, I remember you mentioned on our Neutral Milk Hotel episode that the Neutral Milk Hotel song Naomi was written about the Galaxy 500 bassist, Naomi Yang, right? So there it's just his little bit of in the Zekeist.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, good point.
SPEAKER_00Uh I think he also wear him paints these pictures, creates these little vignettes, right? I mean, his lyrics are great, but they're not stories, they're not telling you about the characters, they're not in a character development sense, they're more painting a picture in situations of what the characters are in and the feelings of the characters that I really like, right? And I think his use of the doo-wops is unparalleled, right? I mean, Lou Reed loved doo-wop, and Jonathan Richmond, who loved Lou Reed, did a whole bunch of doo-wops in his songs, and I can remember listening to those Jonathan Richmond albums after The Modern Lovers going, How did he come up with all these nonsense words that sound so great in the song? And I think Wareham has done that better than those guys. But it made me think I remember reading this article, and I did I didn't go back and re-reread it, but I convinced myself that it did exist in Harper's magazine. Do you remember if you remember Harper's? I still read Harper's. Harper's is great. I love it. It's and I get it in a tangible physical copy, and it makes me happy to read it. So back in the late tens, it was an article by this guy named Dave Samuels. I looked it up, and it was called Underachievers, Please Try Harder. I've heard of that. Well, I think that's the Underachievers something is a camera obscura title. I don't think they say please try harder, but it's it's there's something about underachievers and cameras obscura. Yeah. And so the the point of this, he's basically he talks about Wareham getting invited to curate this rock show in England. I think it was All Tomorrow's Parties, where it was like a they have bring the curator gets to pick all the bands, it would be pretty cool. And he's like, he says that Wareham is the patron saint of elegant underachievement, a guy who proved you can make perfect art without pretending you want to be a winner, which I think is kind of a nice, like, you know, he's like, I'm just gonna bring back Luna because it feels good, and I'm gonna tour, and I'm so excited about Luna. He's doing his thing. You know, it's uh it's a a a smallness, a deliberate smallness. And I think one of the quotes that I remember reading, I think it was Rolling Stone, called them the best band you have never heard of. That's a good question. And so I think that's why they're an air shifter band, and that's our mission to change that, Renee. We've got to get more people listening to Luna. Exactly. So listen, people please. Yeah, please, please.
SPEAKER_01Uh okay, well, that's a wrap. What are we gonna hear next time, Renee? We're gonna go Canadian. We're gonna listen and talk about a Canadian band that was not a supergroup when they started, but had so many offshoots and little projects that those same members literally transformed into the supergroup, which was the same members, but because they all did these offshoots and projects and then came back, now they're a supergroup. I'm looking forward to hearing that one. Yeah, it's gonna be good. Okay, until next time. Until next time. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Earshifter. Tune in next time where we'll cover another band that deserves more. You can find Earshifter on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, friend us or listen to our playlists on Spotify and visit Earshifter.com for more information. Special thanks go to our logo designer, Stuart Thursby, and our intro outro music by Joe Novak. You can find him as Bye Bye Badman OneWord on SoundCloud. And a big shout out to Joe for being our awesome sound engineer slash editor. Until next time.
