Luna

So when Wareham and his former Luna bandmates – bass player Britta Phillips, guitarist Sean Eden and drummer Lee Wall – reformed to play a run of shows in Spain in 2014, the risks were already apparent.

“Yes, I remember that David Byrne quote,” Wareham laughs. “But when we did get back together in Spain last year it was nothing like getting back together with an old girlfriend. It was actually a lot of fun, and it was exciting to play the songs.”

Wareham formed Luna in the aftermath of the demise of his previous band, Galaxie 500. That group had imploded acrimoniously, with Wareham not speaking to his former Galaxie 500 comrades, Naomi Yang and Damon Krukowski, for many years. “It was hard being in a band with a couple,” he says. “So I wanted to have my own band – and I wanted to have a quartet, because a trio can be really difficult onstage.”

While Wareham wanted Luna to explore different musical territory to Galaxie 500, there was no grand plan. “I think a band takes on a life of its own based on the people that are in it,” he says. “You can have something of an idea, but you don’t really know where it’s going to go.”

Wareham is mildly critical of Luna’s debut album, Lunapark, released in 1992. However, the ‘Time’ seven-inch that followed included ‘Egg Nog’, an instrumental track penned by the band’s original bass player Justin Harwood that Wareham once claimed was “just about the best thing the band ever committed to record”.

In 1993, Luna were offered the support gig of a lifetime, accompanying The Velvet Underground on their European reunion tour. For the headliners, the tour was fraught: Lou Reed and John Cale struggled to overcome personal and artistic differences, and the band broke apart again shortly after the tour’s end. But Wareham says Reed was a model of goodwill and kindness toward Luna.

“Lou was always very nice to us. He always treated us really well, and always made sure we had the opportunity to do a soundcheck.”

The Velvet Underground affiliation continued on Luna’s second album, Bewitched, with Sterling Morrison contributing guitar on two songs. “It’s true that Sterling Morrison is to some degree underappreciated,” Wareham says. “But having him in the studio with us, and hearing him onstage, you thought instantly, ‘That sounds like The Velvet Underground.’ And all the pretty stuff on the third Velvets album, that’s Sterling.”

Yet Wareham explains it wasn’t until the release of the band’s third album, 1995’s Penthouse, that Luna “really hit [their] stride”. Routinely lauded as Luna’s most impressive recording, it includes the elegant eight-minute dream-pop track, ‘23 Minutes In Brussels’. “I took the name of that track from a Suicide bootleg,” Wareham says. “Suicide were supporting Elvis Costello and they got booed off the stage and someone steals Alan Vega’s microphone.”

Coincidentally, Wareham’s own experience playing in Brussels isn’t especially positive. “Something bad happened when we were there – van windows getting smashed or something like that,” he says.

Luna would go on to record a total of seven studio albums before disbanding in 2005. While they received constant critical acclaim during their 14-year career, the New Yorkers never achieved commensurate commercial success. It’s not something Wareham spends too much time dwelling on.

“I don’t know if I’d do anything differently if we had to do it all again. All we ever did was to try and make the best songs we could. We didn’t sit there listening to the radio trying to work out what we should try and sound like. I remember reading an interview with John Lydon in which he said, ‘Once you start doing that you become everything you hate.’”

The band’s 2014 reunion was specifically motivated by a request to play shows in Spain and Portugal. While Wareham reflects negatively on tour life in Luna songs like ‘Black Postcards’, this time around the touring dynamic is different.

“We could be dragging our asses across Europe, but we’re not going to – we’re just going to play where people want us, and we can have some fun, or make some money, or hopefully both,” he says. “But it does feel strange sometimes singing those songs about bad times on the road. It’s not like that anymore, because we don’t expect it to be the whole future.”