Back Numbers

Dean & Britta | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (February 27, 2007)
• Original Release Date: 2007
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Rounder / Umgd
• ASIN: B000LXHGBC
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #147,482 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

The thoroughly excellent sophomore release by the two best-looking members of Luna should make any fans who bemoaned that group's demise happy as hell with its lovingly crafted cocktail hour visions. Back Numbers offers up perfect rainy day music on every graceful, laconic song. The album recalls the sophisticated, decadent sounds of Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra throughout. Unsurprisingly, Hazlewood is covered on one song here but this is no cheesy retro exercise; in fact, no one has mined this type of material with such originality since Nick Cave approached it in the 1980s. Each song is imbued with a subtly different style, with nods to the hazy psychedelic folk-rock of Opal and Clay Allison on numbers like "Say Goodnight" and the steampunk synth washes of Sonic Boom (who performs on the album) and Suicide on "Singer Sing." Other numbers like "The Sun Is Still Sunny"--awash in sophisticated strings, hushed dual harmonies, a dash of piano and Mr. Wareham's warm and melodic guitar lines--don't sound like anyone else, at all. Huzzah! --Mike McGonigal

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not mere pop, March 9, 2007

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anomalogue (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Back Numbers (Audio CD)

This is a stunningly beautiful and consistent album. It is not just sugary pop, either. True--it is very accessible music--but to penalize it for that, or even to apologize for its straightforward prettiness, is silly and superficial. Unlike much accessible music, "Back Numbers" starts pretty, but hits deeper and deeper with repeated listenings.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars AKA Step into Our Psychedelic Dreamworld, February 28, 2007

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JG "wordmule" (...onward....thru the fog!) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Back Numbers (Audio CD)

I'll admit it took me a while to get used to Luna. At first, I dismissed them as Velvet Underground clones (insert funny story about revealing my age here: the first time I saw them around 2000, I told the 30-something guy next to me at the show "these guys sound just like Velvet Underground". He says "who"?).

Then, Luna evolved, began sounding more like, well, Luna, and became a really good jam band. At the end of their run, they had more of a late Tom Verlaine sound than early Lou Reed sound (if I recall correctly, Mr. Television did, in fact contribute to some of Luna's later records), and Britta's influence became more pronounced.

Dean and Britta's first album is drop dead gorgeous, and served as a soundtrack for the entire lazy summer of 2003. It still sounds great now. I sent that record to a friend of mine, who sent me an email commenting "it's really mellow, but great". I replied something to the effect that's about what you can expect from a couple who write songs about Valium by the seaside, and themes along those lines.

I've only given "Back Numbers" a couple of spins, but so far, the mellow psilocybin trend continues. Oddly, itunes puts in the "easy listening" category. I think that's far too simplistic of a description, since there's a lot going on below the "easy listening" part if you just pay attention, but, you can also put this on as background music.

Echoes of Lou Reed and Tina Weymouth abound, but the album continues developing what's becoming that unique Dean and Britta sound.

Summer is just around the corner. "Back numbers" is already a strong candidate to become the soundtrack for the (hopefully just as lazy) summer of 2007.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another perfect pop piece from Wareham & Phillips, March 5, 2007

By 

Black Eagle Child (Wisconsin) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Back Numbers (Audio CD)

While Dean & Britta aren't making groundbreaking music here, it's safe to say that they've got a very strong collection of songs here and a nice follow-up to "L'Avventura."

Like their 'debut' (of course, the duo had already been working together on the late Luna material, but "L'Avventura" is the debut of Dean & Britta as a 'new act'), these are slow, massaging tunes that'll get into your head and stay there. I put this CD into my computer's CD-Rom drive and when iTunes brought up the album info, they called it 'Easy Listening.' I wouldn't go that far, but there is definitely an easy quality to Dean Wareham's music since the end of Luna, and Britta Phillips is a perfect melodic accompaniment to Wareham's meager vocals.

The songs are all poppy and very listenable. This album doesn't ask for much from you as a listener, and so it's no surprise that I've been putting this on quite frequently...it's just so NICE to listen to. The lyrics are benign and often just subtly witty. And above all, the album is full of a kind of sentimentality (almost cliche) that the artists themselves seem to be well aware of, which gives them a certain ability to take liberties with what *would* otherwise be boring pop cliches. In other words, yeah this music has some sentimentality to it, but Dean & Britta are a couple of easy-going musicians and they don't take themselves too seriously.

Dean & Britta have pulled it off with the same success that "L'Avventura" saw and the result is this incredibly enjoyable "pop" from the periphery of the genre.