*** Luna

PUP TENT

(Elektra)

With Galaxie 500 in the late '80s, Dean Wareham demonstrated a tender fixation with the Velvet Underground that felt like the aural equivalent of a dimly lit garden apartment. With Luna in the mid '90s, he expanded and refined his obsession till it was fit for a penthouse. Fortifying his helpless romanticism with sly humor and the band's gorgeous guitars with quick-stepping rhythms, he led Luna on a string of CDs that rank among the most stylish, sexy, and accessible guitar-rock efforts of the decade.

Now, the band have returned from a year's recording break with a new drummer and oddly diminished inspiration. Over here, Wareham masks a generic tune by blurring his vocals through a microphone embedded in a toy robot; over there, he milks his standard lyrical format with goofy couplets. Still, spend some time in these reduced quarters and soon enough you'll notice plenty of beautiful views out the smaller windows, from the shifting tones of the hard-rocking "IHOP" to the majestically wrought regret of the sweeping "Bobby Peru." The group may have moved down a few floors, but they're still living hundreds of feet above the ground.

-- Franklin Soults

(Luna headline the Paradise this Friday, September 12, with Sixteen Deluxe opening; call 423-NEXT.)