Penthouse

by

Luna

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they'd be listening to Luna and, as the speakers boomed out across the sound, Jay Gatsby would be at the end of his dock, trying to figure his way into their world by figuring out this music. Here's what Penthouse sounds like -- it sounds like languid, six foot tall women reaching across a glass topped table for their one cigarette a month. It sounds like lipstick traces on your cheek alone in a warm taxicab and the first snowflakes just getting flicked away by the windshield wipers. It sounds like one single light still softly on at 3 AM in the windows of an otherwise all dark building across Fifth Avenue from Central Park; awful things happening there perhaps, but you're pretty sure not. It's music that defines all those times you can't quite figure out what's going on, or where it may be headed, but God do you love it as it's happening. And there's the tie back to Gatsby and the Buchanans, no matter how seductive this work, there's a whiff of darkness about it too, but isn't that always the way with temptation. Personally, I've always wanted to be like the singer's friend in Chinatown --"you're out all night/chasing girlies/You're late to work/And you go home earlies." Yep, "earlies," that's what he says.

"Shimmers," see Amazon reviewer above, is a good word for the music; seamless would be another. And Wareham's voice is another instrument in the mix, sometimes lulling, sometimes quietly desperate. Or think of water, this music flows you along from one cut to the next, and in the time it takes you to surface from the cut just ended, a new one has begun. I don't know of another CD where I've been less aware of the blank seconds between cuts than on this one.

Specifics? Comparisons? The closest sound I know is some of the quieter Yo La Tengo. Lloyd Cole in the Commotions days is a good one too. Forced to pick best cuts -- and it's worth stressing again that each cut builds into the others, making it less important to cite individual highlights -- I'd go with Chinatown, Lost in Space, and Kalamazoo. I don't much care for Bonnie and Clyde, though. Otherwise, this CD is damn near flawless. You've got to go to Bewitched for Wareham's single best lines though in Going Home which kicks off like this: "I've seen her face/in those scented magazines....The Chrsyler building is talking to the Empire State/The Twin Towers are talking to each other/Saying "all is forgiven/I love you still/And we're home, going home." What could more comforting, reconciliation of buildings and of people. But to get that, you'd have to buy another Luna CD. Oh, well, many worse ways to keep the economy going.