Dean & Britta
Beautiful people make beautiful music
By Maggie Serota
Published: February 21st, 2007 | 4:18pm
As Britta Phillips and Dean Wareham take the stage in the cozy showroom at the East Village club Mo Pitkin’s on January 23, 2007, you can hear the audience exhale collectively.
The former members of the now-defunct seminal dream-pop band Luna are also well-known musicians in their own rights. Wareham got his start as the singer of Galaxie 500, and before Luna, Phillips was the vocalist in the 1980s cartoon Jem.
The pair remains impervious to the crowd’s obvious awe because, well, couples this statuesque must be used to taking people’s breath away. Without waiting for show-goers to pick up their jaws from the floor, Dean & Britta launch into a set of their languid, breathy, cocktail-hour seductions with a few animated pauses for between-song banter. Equally mesmerizing as their musical output is the sense of pervasive intimacy between the pair. That seems natural, given the fact that they are newlyweds.
“That was a track off the Word You Used to Say EP,” Wareham declares.
“No, that was off L’Avventura,” chimes Phillips.
The otherwise passive audience erupts into laughter.
“That wasn’t comedy,” Wareham says with a good-natured air of mock authority.
The Mo’ Pitkin’s show is one in a series of three shows booked in smaller venues around New York as a bit of a teaser before they launch into their national tour in March 2007. “Our first anniversary is in March, but that will most likely get lost in the shuffle of touring,” Phillips explains a few weeks later via phone from the East Village apartment she shares with Wareham. From the satisfied lull of her voice, she sounds completely OK with that. To Phillips, playing onstage with her husband is just as romantic an anniversary date as any other.
Phillips exudes an air of overall contentment. “We both feel a little more stable and comfortable,” she says. “There are no problems [in our marriage] so far, except sometimes I’ll get scolded when I lose things, like my suitcase or my passport.”
It has been about two years since the final Luna show, and Phillips is more than a little anxious to get back on the road. “I’m looking forward to the tour since it’s been a looooooooong time,” she laments.
In the meantime, she and Wareham kept themselves busy by penning tunes for the soundtrack of Noah Baumbach’s film <I>Squid and the Whale and recording their latest album, Back Numbers, under the guidance of producer Tony Visconti, who has also twiddled knobs for the likes of David Bowie, T. Rex, and Morrissey.
Back Numbers is a collection of offbeat covers and a smattering of originals recorded in the tradition of the ’60s duet albums. “Dean usually suggests the covers since he’s really good at picking them out, then we do a lot of sorting through,” Phillips says.
On an album that boasts rarities from the likes of Donovan and the Troggs, one of the standouts is a re-imagining of the Lee Hazlewood/Ann Margret collaboration “You Turn My Head Around.” The track, which is a marked departure from the ethereal soundscapes for which both Luna and Dean and Britta are known, provided Phillips an opportunity to show off her vocal range. “I got to sing high and loud,” she says. “Not with the usual whispery, breathy vocals.”
Unfortunately, the duo’s most arresting cover, Serge Gainsbourg’s “Bonnie & Clyde,” isn’t included on Back Numbers, but it was performed as the encore to the Mo Pitkin’s show. “Dean actually recorded that with [Stereolab’s] Laetitia Sadier,” Phillips says. “It’s a hidden track on [the Luna album] Penthouse.”
While Sadier may have recorded the song first, Phillips injects her own sensuality into the performance and, in the process, makes the track hers.
Of course, in person, the combined sex appeal of Dean and Britta is a bit overwhelming, and when you add hushed dual vocals cooed in French, well, it’s almost too much.
Almost.
Issue #31
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