Luna

In A-sides & B-sides, I wrote a story called "Superfreaky Memories," which was a song off of Luna's album "The Days of Our Nights." The song has a wistful feeling to it, especially with the lyrics "And the gears are rolling by but you don't get any wiser, and the years are rolling on but you're going round and round."

Of course, my story has nothing to do with that but instead has to do with advertising in the not too distant future. Incidentally, "Superfreaky Memories," was also the last story I wrote before I decided A-sides & B-sides was "finished," whatever that means.

Now Luna has a new album out called A Sentimental Education as well as an E.P of instrumentals called A Place of Greater Safety which is their first recorded stuff under the Luna name in more than a decade.

After a few spins of both I have to say the instrumentals are the stand out to me. While Luna was always cut from the same cloth as the Velvet Underground or Dream Syndicate, they managed over several albums to refine that sound into something inimitable. Certainly Penthouse is one of those seminal albums that melded effortless distant cool with wry lyrics. When Britta Phillips joined the band an added warmth appeared that didn't diminish the band at all. I saw them many times over the years in locales as different as The Catskills, Atlanta, and during their reunion show in Los Angeles which was a stand out. I think the first time I saw them play was in the parking lot of the Andy Warhol Museum when The Days Of Our Nights came out.

And while A Sentimental Education are filled with standout covers like the Velvets-minus-Loud-Reed track "Friends," and Mercury Rev's "Car Wash Hair," and Mink Deville's "Let Me Dream if I want to," A Place of Greater Safety is just as warm and familiar. "GTX3," "Captain Pentagon," and "Spanish Odyssey" find the band in rare form musically, too.