In a season where we all seek comfort, tradition, and a return to a home of sorts, a trio composed of indie music’s foundational members have gifted us A Peace of Us—an album of diverse holiday tunes filtered through their musical imaginations. Dean & Britta, well-known from their work defining a genre with Galaxie 500 and Luna, join Spacemen 3’s Sonic Boom, another bastion of indie’s collective adolescence, to bring to life a collection that draws from early ‘60s pop, garage, country, James Bond soundtracks, Christmas carols, and electronica. Dean Wareham recalls a sentiment from his DJ friend Chris: “You can experience all the emotions of Christmas through music: love and hate, joy and heartache, nostalgia, regret, anticipation, and frustration.”
Their venture into a holiday album was organic, spurred by a few cover tunes over the years, a Christmas special during the pandemic, and finally collaborative sessions between Dean & Britta in L.A. and Sonic Boom in Portugal. The trio all contributed vocals, with guitars by Wareham, bass and keyboards by Phillips, effects, and mixes by Sonic. The result is an album of exploration as well as comfort, “like Bing Crosby…on acid,” Britta adds, the tracklist a reminder that the holidays are complex and tragicomic.
As is often the case with holiday merriment, the album has a soft undertone of the bittersweet. Wareham sings one of David Berman’s final songs, “Snow is Falling in Manhattan,” one Dean believes is “destined to be a holiday classic.” Its lyrics foreshadow Berman’s tragic death: “Songs build little rooms in time / and housed within the song’s design / is the ghost the host has left behind.”
The Christmas blues surface again with Willie Nelson’s “Pretty Paper,” rendered here as a duet between Britta and Sonic Boom, their pulsing synth-heavy production updating the song for a darkened nightclub rather than a bright honky tonk. This collection steers clear of the usual Christmas chestnuts, but fans of classic indie haze may find a new favorite in “Peace on Earth / Little Drummer Boy” (created for Bing Crosby and David Bowie’s 1977 TV duet). Wareham notes that “Our favorite version is the German one by Marlene Dietrich, so that was our jumping-off point.” All three sing this one together: Wareham’s tenor, then Sonic Boom’s thrumming baritone, and finally Phillips’ soothing contralto making the plea for peace.
If collaboration is the fuel, peace and mutual understanding is surely the fire, and A Peace of Us has us gathered around it. “Christmas is mostly for children anyway,” says Dean. Sonic adds, “Or the inner child in all of us. Goodwill to all men. Hopes and fears for the year to come. And light in the darkness. Where this festival began.”
Dean Wareham founded Galaxie 500 who made three classic albums for Rough Trade in 1988-90. His next band Luna recorded seven albums for Elektra and Beggar’s Banquet.
Britta Phillips’ first musical foray was as the singing voice of Jem (Jem & the Holograms), before she moved to the UK in 1989 with the shoegaze band Belltower. She played bass for the Ben Lee band and then joined Luna on bass in the year 2000.
Dean & Britta have recorded several albums as a duo and have scored two films for Noah Baumbach: The Squid & the Whale and Mistress America.
Sonic Boom was co-founder of the legendary English band Spacemen 3, he went on to form Spectrum and the experimental E.A.R. and has produced records by MGMT, Beach House and Panda Bear. His most recent release was a collaboration with Panda Bear, the groundbreaking Reset album (2022).
The friendship between Dean Wareham and Sonic Boom began in August of 1989 when they met backstage after the penultimate Spaceman 3 gig, at London’s Subterania club. They kept in touch, played occasional shows together, and in 2002 made their first recorded collaboration when Sonic re-mixed six Dean & Britta songs for the Sonic Souvenirs EP. They have toured together and collaborated on a number of songs since then, but A Peace of Us is their first full album as a trio.
Their combined and individual efforts have built a musical world we now associate with the classic indie greats; the comforting realm of lush guitar tones, adventurous synths, and layered vocals, holding the listener in a realm as unmistakable as their own.
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