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LUNA
DIEHARDS
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Luna’s November 5 show at the Middle East may not be remembered as one of rock’s great farewells. But in an hour-and-a-half set, the band — who’ve spent the last decade-plus creating luminous, catchy, and exceedingly smart music — said a fitting goodbye to Boston that gave diehard fans plenty of gratification. As anyone who’s followed the band knows, the Luna who swung through Cambridge last week are substantially different from the band who gave us Lunapark (Elektra) back in 1992. Drummer Lee Wall came on board for 1997’s Pup Tent (Elektra), and bassist Britta Phillips joined in 2000. Maybe it’s Phillips and Wall, or maybe it’s a shift in frontman Dean Wareham’s tastes, but this incarnation seems slightly more inclined to propulsive rock and slightly less adept at navigating the band’s signature oscillations between cacophony and near-silence. On Friday, this tendency worked admirably on "Speedbumps," a hard-edged (by Luna standards, anyway) selection from Rendezvous (Jetset), the band’s farewell CD. But "Friendly Advice," from 1994’s Bewitched (Elektra), deserved a bit more subtlety than it got; with the bass and drums heavy from the outset, the closing chorus — which should be an exuberant epiphany — just sounded like more of the same. Then again, Phillips gets a free pass for serving as Wareham’s muse: without her arrival, Luna might have called it quits in their underwhelming late-’90s phase and never created Romantica (Jetset) or Rendezvous. And given the merits of last week’s show, the aforementioned criticism is a bit nitpicky. Wareham and company gave the band’s middle works a wide berth, focusing instead on Rendezvous and the three early albums that consolidated Luna’s reputation: Lunapark, Bewitched, and the superb Penthouse (Elektra). Recent efforts like "Malibu Love Nest" and "Cindy Tastes of Barbecue" made a strong case that Luna are going out, if not at the top of their game, then in the midst of a creative renaissance. But it was the older stuff — "Slide," "Going Home," "Sideshow by the Seashore" — that satisfied most while reminding us that Luna weren’t just a Velvet Underground ripoff. For the penultimate number, the band chose "Goodbye," from Lunapark, a poignant hymn of farewell that still stands as their most wistful tune. Then they closed with "23 Minutes in Brussels," an æthereal space-rock number that started forcefully and slowly, slowly faded away. This time, Wall and Phillips rose to the challenge, and Luna’s closing retreat into silence was masterfully executed. When it was all over, the laconic Wareham looked as if he were struggling to avoid smiling too much: he thanked the crowd twice, nodded, and hustled off stage.
BY ADAM REILLY
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