You have to hand it to Boston’s Galaxie 500; they sure knew how to make a lot out of a little. First they made a fetish out of the third Velvet Underground album, then they proceeded to fashion an entire (if relatively short-lived) career paying tribute to it with their minor key but often thrilling dream pop.
Which is pretty amazing when you think about it. We all have our role models, but Dean Wareham (guitar, vocals), Naomi Yang (bass), and Damon Krukowski (drums) took slavish hero-worship to the V.U. about as far as you can without offering human sacrifices at an altar of Lou Reed.
But hey; if you happen to love 1969’s The Velvet Underground (and who doesn’t?), the band that took its name from a friend’s car is guaranteed to light up your pleasure receptors like a pachinko machine. Their droning (but often exhilarating) shoegaze has a way of colliding with your synapses and causing them to sizzle like bug zappers, and if you’re like me the result is a low-dose case of happy delirium.
On 1988 debut Today, Galaxie 500 established the blueprint for their entire career. Slow tempos, delicate melodies, lots of cool strumming and chiming guitar, a dependable drone–and let us not forget Wareham’s (and sometimes Wang’s) fey, tender, and almost tentative vocals. This is music that will break your heart, and not because it evokes heartbreak, terror, pity or any other recognizable human emotion. No, it will break your heart simply because it’s there.
These folks don’t show off; showing off would be a betrayal of everything they believe in. They seduce, and I’m not talking about sex here. Galaxie 500 establish a meditative mood from opening cut “Flowers” (“Pictures,” “Parking Lot,” Tugboat”: this trio likes their common nouns just as much as the David Byrne of Fear of Music) and don’t really deviate from it much. Except on their rumbling, rousing, drone-happy cover of Jonathan “I love the V.U. too!” Richman’s “Don’t Let Our Youth Go to Waste,” which evokes the nightmare of the Doors as much as it does the nightmare of the Velvet Underground. And the fiery (and self-explanatory) “Instrumental,” which sets the kind of chukka-chukka rhythm guitar that made the V.U.’s “What Goes On” so great against a lead guitar best described as menacing.
I have my faves. Wareham rises above passivity on the positively pouting “Tugboat”; “I don’t wanna stay at your party/I don’t wanna talk with your friends/I don’t wanna vote for your President/I just wanna be your tugboat captain,” he sings, and that’s fine by me. Dean, the tugboat is yours. And Galaxie 500 reach euphoric heights on the very, very lovely and transcendental “Temperature’s Rising,” on which the temperature does indeed rise–this one’s every bit as happy-making as that glorious first day of spring, and you can practically smell the gladiolas blooming.
“Oblivious” is jaunty, but Wareham’s ambitions aren’t very high; when all is said and done all he really wants to do is “stay in bed with you/Till it’s time to get a drink.” On the percolating “Parking Lot” he aims even lower; fine to him is “hiding in a parking lot and/Watching all the people fall to pieces.” I love Krukowski’s muffled drumming, and Wareham once again puts some real menace into his guitar. As for “It’s Getting Late,” it’s a hushed and lovely midnight plaint, full of dim-light yearning set against a note-bending electric guitar.
Today holds up, just as Galaxie 500’s pair of subsequent studio LPs do; on all three Wareham and Company do miraculous things within the tight constraints they set for themselves. Just how much can you do with a mood, some sinuous but similar-sounding melodies, and a lovely drone? A whole lot, as it turns out.
Very few bands could get away with writing one song (okay, I’m exaggerating a bit here) and then tinkering with it over the course of their career. It’s a species of greatness, that, and I love Galaxie 500 for it. But then again, it just so happens I love the song.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
