Dean Wareham – That's The Price of Loving Me: :: Ondarock reviews

It took 34 years to bring together Dean Wareham, voice and guitar of the legendary Galaxie 500, with Mark Kramer, the historic producer who was able to fully enhance the qualities. A long period during which the two lost sight of each other, each engaged in their activities. Wareham has chased new horizons between Luna and Dean & Britta, always with his gaze aimed at that sense of grace and disorientation typical of the Galaxie 500. Kramer, for his part, gave birth to a second project, the lows, also building an eclectic career and prolific between study and stage.

The expectations for the return of the collaboration were decidedly high, also because Wareham's previous solo album, “I Have Nothing to Say to the Mayor of La”, was one of the highest moments of his post-galaxie career. But the years pass and it is not said that the alchemy of the past is repeated automatically. Let's face it: the touch of Kramer feels. The arrangements become richer, stratified: cello, piano, spatial synths, congas, while Wareham's voice is pushed by echoes and reverberations. All this contributes to creating unexpected sensations in the slender ballads of the guitarist of New Zealand origin.

An aura back It envelops everything “that's the price of Loving me”, as if it floated in an indefinite time. If some songs take on a flavor vintage At Bacharach (“You Were the Ones I Had to Betray”, “That's the Price of Loving Me”, “Yesterday's Hero”), others take flight towards psychedelic universes (“New World Julie”, “Bourgeois Manqué”). And when the music lands, to welcome it there is a restless and cinematographic world, as in “The Cloud is coming”, a song chosen for the soundtrack of “White Noise” by Noah Baumbach, based on the novel of the same name by Don Delillo.

Although the songwriting of Dean does not reach the peaks of “I Have Nothing to Say to the Mayor of La”.this new work is distinguished by a sense of lightness that hovers among the synths, which flutter daring the liquid arrangements of Kramer over the liquid arrangements. The sense of restlessness undergoes, typical of the author of “On Fire”, seems to have dissolved. The choice of the covers is always sought, which range from the solo repertoire of the Red Krayola Mayo Thompson, with a “Dear Betty Baby” revisited in a Velvetian key, up to a song in German of Nico (“Reich der Träume”).

Although some moments are less convincing – such as the song dedicated to the Gibson Es -335 of 1968 “We're Not Finished Yet” – this renewed collaboration still represents a good starting point. It does not close a circle, but opens a new one, letting it glimpse still all to be explored. We hope in a sequel.

07/04/2025