A Head Full of Wishes

A Head Full of Wishes is a site for Galaxie 500, Luna, Damon & Naomi, Dean & Britta and Dean Wareham. With news, articles and lists of releases and past and future shows.

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A review of 13 Most Beautiful…

Here's a review of sorts of 13 Most Beautiful..., although the fact that it was on the Pittsburgh International Festival of Firsts blog means it might not be considered objective. It does give a nice bit of insight and makes the wait (for me) until the DVD release seem rather a long one.

It mentions a couple of the tunes in the show (both Luna ones)...

The resultant songs, taken separately from their filmic foundation, might prove album-worthy - dreamy, melancholy guitar-based songs worthy of a long indie-pop half-life. But as was their brief, Dean & Britta’s compositions shouldn’t stand alone. Like "Teenage Lightning," a rock tune performed for Warhol superstar Paul America - whose shifting discomfort seems, after Buchanan, like a child at the department store portrait sitting. Or Dennis Hopper’s dark instrumental, "The Enabler," which builds reservedly until - Wareham watching for some nearly invisible visual cue - releasing into its bridge, just as Hopper’s tight features relax into a rare smile.

...and stresses the importance of Dean & Britta's music...

The sweeping beauty of 13 Most Beautiful… is in the Dean & Britta songs' ability to transform these famously action-free portraits into four-minute narratives; to lend dramatic arc and an emotional tension to inaction.

The luckiest among you can catch the performance tonight and tomorrow night at the Byham Theatre in Pittsburgh. The rest of us will have to wait until it tours the country (and hopefully Europe) over the next few months or stick it out for the DVD release in January.