With their first new music since 2004’s Rendezvous, the master Lou Reed disciples in Luna return to one of their strengths: covers. A Sentimental Education finds the quartet—Dean Wareham, Britta Phillips, Sean Eden and Lee Wall—tackling mostly obscurities by the likes of Yes, Bob Dylan, Rolling Stones, Mercury Rev and Fleetwood Mac. Simultaneously released companion piece A Place Of Greater Safety EP is all-original, however, though the six songs are instrumentals. Luna will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week.
Wareham: This surreal Australian film debuted at the Cannes film festival in 1971. Martin Scorsese saw it there and said, “It left me speechless.” The film then disappeared for some 40 years before being re-released in 2009. It tells of a middle-school teacher who gets stranded in a tiny Australian town—the Yabba—where the greatest insult is to refuse a glass of beer. Gambling, drinking, weird sex and a disturbing and violent kangaroo hunt follow. Hard to believe the same director Ted Kotcheff years later made Weekend At Bernie’s, but maybe I need to revisit that one.
