My record collection
[285] Luna - A Sentimental Education (LP)

Anyone reading between the lines of my post about A Place of Greater Safety might have noticed that I was a little cool on the post reunion Luna releases. Actually you don’t really need to read between the lines, I think “I did have reservations - particularly with regard to these releases” is fairly explicit.

Luna - A Sentimental Education (LP)

Of course, my views weren’t about the music but more about the releases themselves, maybe ten years of silence being broken with a covers album and an EP of instrumentals couldn’t help but seem a little disappointing. But Dean is a master of the art of the cover version, both in selection and interpretation so maybe I was just being a bit churlish and should try and separate it from the way it came into being.

“A Sentimental Education” was announced in May 2017 and released via Pledgemusic, a direct-to-fan platform that shortly after Luna’s campaign folded with many artists never recouping the money - fortunately I believe that Luna (and Britta who had released her Luck of Magic through the platform) managed to make it through the process unscathed. When I asked Dean how it was going (in July 2017) he seemed pretty upbeat on it:

It’s a ton of work (mostly for me and Britta) and there are things about Pledge I find cheesy [...] but the great thing is that on the day our record releases, we will have recouped all the album costs and paid for manufacturing, and publicist and radio promo etc.

Dean Wareham (email 4th July 2017)

Of course, despite any reservations I may have had I did buy the “deluxe bundle” and also shelled out for a handwritten lyric sheet to enhance my Dear Paulina museum exhibit:

Dear Paulina in the AHFoW museum (aka my bedroom)

The band’s selection of covers is of course as idiosyncratic as we’ve generally come to expect. Yes there are covers of Yes, Bowie, The Stones, and The Velvet Underground but such obscure selections that you could almost convince yourself they weren’t covers at all. I had probably heard less than half of the originals (I almost wrote that I was familiar with them but that would be an exxageration for most of them), and the rest were completely new.

It is a beautiful sounding album¸ and all the covers end up sounding perfect for Luna - does that mean the selection is perfect or that literally anything can be Lunafied!?

It has been a long time since I sat down and listened to the whole album, maybe that absence has softened me but I think I can forgive them for releasing it.

Songs I knew:

• Friends - The VU’s “Squeeze” was an early snag from Audiogalaxy or Napster in the early 00s.
• Sweetness - I’ve mentioned my surprising Yes love before so Sweetness was on my radar - I was unaware of its use in “Buffalo 66” because I’d never made it to the end of that nonsense! (Sorry I know there are fans… I’m just not one of them!!)
• Letter to Hermione - I think I picked up the 1969 Bowie album on a discounted CD when it was remastered and released (as Space Oddity) in the late 90s.
• Car Wash Hair obviously!

So… while I still think that maybe the decision to release a covers album was questionable I think the execution, and therefore the finished product, was flawless so, I guess I’ll shut up about it now (although I do have a CD copy later in this series… who knows what nonsense I’ll spout then!)

• Catalogue Number: AHFOW 12/059
• Artist: Luna
• Title: A Sentimental Education
• Notes: Translucent yellow vinyl
• Format: LP
• Bought in a deluxe Pledgemusic bundle for a lot of money!
• Buy ‘A Sentimental Education’ on Bandcamp

Previously in my record collection:

• [148] Luna - A Place of Greater Safety