Narc. Magazine Online
Reliably informed
Elodie A. Roy enjoys a night of musical raptures courtesy of Dean & Britta
Image by Luz Gallardo
Dean & Britta’s short UK tour ends at North Shields’ Engine Room. The room is packed – the gig has sold out (so has the previous night’s show in Durham’s equally tiny Holy GrAle). And so Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips play very near to one another and very near to their audience! Britta is on the bass, Dean plays the guitar. Both sing. The duo revisit memories and moments from their extensive recording career. They don’t need to look at each other much: they’ve played together for so long (since 2001). When Dean’s hands blunder or Britta’s voice starts trembling it barely matters at all, for there is always another song to sing. I like how easy going, how relaxed their playing is; in Dean & Britta’s world, there is room for mistakes and second chances.
Tonight’s setlist includes songs from Dean’s new solo album, That’s the Price of Loving Me, including Dear Betty Baby and Mystery Guest, as well as many covers. Britta sings The Cars’s Drive and Dylan’s I’ll Take It With Mine in a wistful, brittle voice (the way Nico did). When the band revisit Galaxie 500 (with covers of Snowstorm and Blue Thunder), the audience fall into a state of rapture and the air slowly fills with reverence and real magic. The songs – written nearly forty years ago – have retained their plaintive, unbearably fragile beauty. Dean can still hit the high notes the way he used to.
As the duo play Don’t Let Our Youth Go To Waste, I cannot help looking at the audience. Most people are in their 40s and beyond. The tiny room is crammed with ghosts – memories of other nights, other loves. Yet the night is vibrant, curiously alive. One line from The Sun Is Still Sunny, played as an encore, encapsulates well the ambiguity of the moment: “we’re not going back there again”, Dean & Britta softly sing in unison. But both love and music are time machines and, for a little while, we find ourselves back there again.
