Dean Wareham is one of the key figures of indie music in the last 40 years. As the guitarist and singer of Galaxie 500, with bandmates Damon Krukowski (drums) and Naomi Yang (bass and vocals) he released three albums, Today (1988), On Fire (1989) and This Is Our Music (1990), whose quiet beauty and striking songwriting would redefine what independent music could do. After Galaxie 500 split in 1991, he formed Luna, who released seven wonderful albums before dissolving in 2005. Since then he has made music as the duo Dean & Britta, with his partner and ex-Luna bass player Britta Phillips, and recorded and released a number of solo albums. The most recent, That’s The Price Of Loving Me, was released in March this year by Carpark Records, and sees Wareham teaming up once more with Galaxie 500’s producer and collaborator Kramer to release a collection of 10 beautiful and moving songs. It follows last year’s Galaxie 500 compilation Uncollected Noise New York ’88-’90, which collected a wealth of rare and unreleased tracks from the Galaxie 500 archives, and Dean & Britta & Sonic Boom’s A Peace Of Us, a Christmas album recorded with the ex-Spacemen 3 pioneer. Dean Wareham was playing a gig in support of this new album at Rough Trade Liverpool, and was kind enough to speak with OUTSIDELEFT beforehand.
OUTSIDELEFT: Your new album That’s The Price Of Loving Me was released last month, and it sees you working with Kramer again for the first time since Galaxie 500 split up…
DEAN WAREHAM: It’s the first time since 1990, yeah. I think it's a new record for the longest time between records! Maybe it isn't.
OL: So how did that collaboration come about?
DW: We never really lost touch. And he would remind me, we should do a record. And I lost a couple of friends during the pandemic. And then there's just a certain point, it just dawned on me that you can keep saying, oh yeah, we'll make a record one day. But actually, in life, time runs out. Not that it's about to run out on me! But we're not here forever, obviously. So yeah. The thing I have to do to make the record is book studio to just like, make the decisions. And it's a big decision, but once you make the decision you're like, Okay, that's it. It's gonna happen in May. We put down some deposit. Then that makes it real. And makes me panic a little about writing songs!
OL: And did it feel like returning to old times again.
DW: Well we just can't quite go back. You can’t go back 34 years. Because we're all different, and the technology is different, and the scene is different. That said, we worked it in a similar way, which is, we worked quickly. Which Kramer likes, and frankly, I enjoy it too. We never felt like we needed a band. It's like, the longer the band is together, the longer you take to make records. You know, instead of a week, it’s three weeks. There's one Luna record that took us three and a half months, it was like Jesus Christ! It does sound good. That record Pup Tent. It took us a long time. And it was someone else's money too.
OL: Which always helps, I'm sure!
DW: Yes, it helps or it hurts! But yeah, I saw Brian Eno on Instagram, and he said, just two things make a good record. A low budget, and a short amount of time. And he should know, because he's made records also that take years to make! It's like, come in, have an idea, just come in and do it. Or do it, and if it's not perfect, it's not perfect. I don't know. It's a better way to work.
OL: It’s nice that you’ve come back around to working with Kramer again, because we just had the Galaxie 500 Uncollected Noise New York ’88-’90 released…
DW: Yeah. About a year ago, Damon emailed and said, oh somebody wants to do a vinyl of the uncollected CD that we've done years ago. And there's a couple extra tracks we could put on it. And I was like, well, no, there are like six extra songs that we had. He didn't even remember them. I barely remembered them. But it turned out we threw out a lot of stuff. And we all listened and then were like, sure, let's just put it all out.
OL: It’s really great for us fans to have those recordings, because there were only ever the three Galaxie 500 albums. Despite only 3 records and only existing from 87 to 91, you still had this massive influence. How do you feel about that, looking back on it now?
DW: You know, I try not to think about it, yeah. So here we are, like, 35 years later, and people are listening to those records. Then I think about myself as a teenager in the late 70s, I wasn’t listening to music from the 1950s really. I guess I was listening to, like, the Ink Spots. My dad played the Ink Spots and I liked that. But it's pretty cool that it still resonates all that much so many years later. I don't think we expected that. And who knows, maybe it will end in two years. People will just be like, no, kids don't like this shit anymore! But there's something to it. It's emotional music, and I think maybe young people hear it and it like speaks to them. It is quietly angry, angsty and pouty. And beautiful. And it is kind of, dare I say, different from a lot of stuff back then.
OL: Since then, you’ve been in Luna, you’ve released records with Dean & Britta, and you’ve released solo albums. How do you work across these different combinations of people? Do you know when you start writing a song that this is one for the solo album?
DW: Well, that’s sort of confusing. I mean, I haven't really been writing songs for Luna. There haven't really been plans to make any new Luna music. I guess we did a covers album, which is kind of easy. And we did an instrumental album. But it was when we all lived in the same city, and we came together and jammed all the time, and that's what the songs grew out of. And now we're scattered all over the place. And it's super fun to play shows, because I think we're really great live band. But I’m not going to go back to making it my whole life again, I think I've said this before, being in a band, it's very different when you're 60 than when you're 20.
OL: Yeah. I suppose the logistics for touring with a whole band are so much more than if it’s just a solo show.
DW: Well, yeah. Actually, the way Luna shows work is super easy because we know the songs, we’ve played them for years. We can show up, practice once and be ready to go. But yes, touring is always a lot of logistics. And long days!
OL: What are you working on at the moment?
DW: What am I working on? Just a lot of touring. It's like a month in the UK and Europe, and then two weeks on the West Coast, and then another three week tour. And working on social media that takes up a huge amount of that time. It's all slightly fallen on us, that work that used to be done by others has been shifted onto all of us. You’re your own travel agent, your own everything. But yeah, I do have a lot of things that I'm juggling. It's confusing to me, so I'm trying to simplify that a little. Because the last year, I had three records coming out. I had the Galaxy 500 thing come out. I had the Christmas record with Sonic Boom that we did. And then this album so it's been a lot. It's been a busy year!
