GALAXIE 500 - Dean Wareham

I don’t know why my eyes are blue

I only know they’re following you

It was roughly the start of spring, a couple of years ago, when an album very close to this one in tone and feel came out: “Electric Cables” by the Lightships project, led by Gerard Love of Teenage Fanclub. The intangible magic, the middle-aged tenderness (that is, halfway between a desire never quite put to rest and a calmer, more platonic need for company) of that record seemed impossible to replicate.

Then comes the dazed, smitten voice of Dean Wareham, laid over the harmonies and the tiny, tickling riffs of “My Eyes Are Blue”, and you realize that generously absent-minded inspiration has struck the alien from galaxie 500 too.

Dean's actual solo career – which, truth be told, never really ended even after Galaxie 500 split – seems to have kicked off with a bang, following December's EP (actually shorter than this debut, just a couple of tracks, one of them borrowed from his friend Michael Holland of Jennyanykind). On production duties here, Jim James of My Morning Jacket replaces Jason Quever of Papercuts, opting for this self-titled LP to take on a decidedly more conventional look (though also, generally, one more faithful to its author's artistic personality), smoothing out every rough edge after the nod to indie dream-pop on “Emancipated Hearts”.

Wareham's songwriterly, psychedelic streak thus comes through forcefully, with the minor-key, Neil Young-style ballad “Love Is Not A Roof Against The Rain” setting up the Reed-ian solitude of “Holding Pattern”, complete with a guitar coda that would not have been out of place on his Galaxie's debut, twenty-five years ago.

And it's as if George Harrison were covering Bob Dylan on “Beat The Devil”, a rare “political” tribute to Amnesty commentator and activist David Cockburn, whose father indeed wrote the screenplay for John Huston's film “Beat The Devil”.

Finally, the close is cinematic, made of faint, nocturnal city impressions, on “Happy And Free”: Dean rides off in a taxi over a lit-up bridge, but he's left one of this year's dearest records on the nightstand.

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01/03/2014