Dean and Britta - He's Coming Home

(Chimney Rocks!, 2007)

A pair of Christmas covers from Dean Wareham, Britta Phillips, and Sonic Boom. Meaning: Galaxie 500, Jem, and Spacemen 3 collaborating on a holiday disc?! Yep! And, in a shock to your late-’80s sensibilities, it’s a rootin’-tootin’ family-time success, no joke. These are both some comfortably warm, gather-round-the-hearth marshmallows spiked with enough sleepy psych to avoid all saccharine sap. “He’s Coming Home,” sung by Britta, is a jaunty yet wistful seasonal love song whose reverb-heavy, Wilson-esque production gives it a richness that doesn’t take away from its pleasant breeziness. Future D&B songs should pay mind: a delicate sleepy/interesting balance is successfully struck on this one, and that’s something well worth replicating. I seem to remember “Old Toy Trains” appearing as a limited download several years ago, but it makes its first physical appearance here, and thank whatever for THAT. Wareham croons wonderfully, and Sonic Boom’s familiar sustained keyboard chords crackle throughout. Fantastic! This single is limited to 500, so fuzzhead sentamentalists the world over oughta buy it up now or cry about it on eBay later. Consider that your warning, goof.

Dean and Britta - White Horses

(Sonic Cathedral, 2007)

Dean and Britta jump into the 7” game with two versions of a track from Back Numbers, their most recent LP. Wareham has always come across a sober and wry/pointed grown-up in his music – even back to Galaxie 500 – but his post-Luna work, while occasionally pretty, has become suffocatingly adult to me, de-emphasizing guitars and wrapping itself in polite cocktail-party production and Lee-and-Nancy-isms that are smoothed of any edge. Here, Britta handles vocals on the typically gentle “White Horses,” a comatose lounge-popper that gets tweaked for the single with the substitution of French lyrics. No great shakes. On the other side, Sonic Boom hardly reinvents the wheel with his remix, but he does transform the song from an E-Z listening clunker into something quite nicely toasted, an undulating, echo-laden blissout that’d make for swell pool-floating music. Whereas the original begged to be relegated to background muzak, Sonic’s mix – particularly because of the clatter he adds to the percussion – demands the listener’s attention, even while it soothes the ol’ brain.