you turn my head around

Over the Moon

The couple that turned Luna into New York's favorite insouciant rock band enter a new phase.

Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips at Angel's Share in New York.
When couples talk about their relationship, they can sound like a broken record. But Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips sound like one of their records: all hushed tones and wry asides, intimate and worldly, a cool layering of two distinct voices—his reedy and laconic, hers sex-kitteny and wise. Back Numbers is their second LP as the duo Dean & Britta and their first since the 2005 breakup of their previous outfit, Luna, once anointed by Rolling Stone as "the best band in the world that no one has ever heard of." The new album's stylish mix of original songs and inspired covers—notably the Lee Hazlewood and Ann-Margret plum "You Turn My Head Around"—is also the couple's first album together as husband and wife.

As with many modern romances, theirs began with a bit of cyber-research. When Britta prepared to audition for Luna back in 2000, she did two things: She learned 10 of their songs in less than a week and searched online for their photographs. "When I first saw Dean's picture, I went, 'Uh-oh!' And then I met him and thought, 'Oh, no,'" Britta recalled, laughing. After the audition, her assessment of Dean changed from "very cute" to "terse, taciturn, and grumpy." But this unsettling mix of cute and grumpy is also what makes Dean's songwriting so irresistible, as on "Wait for Me," a lilting, Britta-sung gem from the new album: "Through the window, dirty sky/Oatmeal cookies make me cry."

For his part, Dean claimed, "It wasn't love at first sight. Britta is attractive, so I'm sure I noticed. But it wasn't the main thing that I was thinking about at the end of that audition. That took time. I guess what was intoxicating was being onstage singing together."

"Performing onstage together was...sexy," Britta chimed in, sitting next to Dean in a small, votive-lit East Village bar with an immense painting of a Japanese cherub-cum-devil peering down at them.

As with many modern romances, there were complications. When Britta joined Luna, Dean was married. Britta had already experienced the complications of romantic involvement with a band member, having been married to and divorced from guitarist Jody Porter, now of Fountains of Wayne. So in spite of the frisson that Dean and Britta were experiencing onstage, they went out of their way to be professional offstage. They were so good at it that they remained a mystery to each other. "I didn't know," Britta admitted. "I didn't know," Dean echoed, as if adding a harmony. "But we figured it out."

Summing up their post-Luna life together, Britta offered three enviable words: "cozy, naughty, and lucky."

She could have also added busy.

As the voice of Bloberta Puppington for the Cartoon Network's Moral Orel, Britta is currently taping the show's second season. Dean, who was born in New Zealand and grew up in Sydney and Manhattan before majoring in social studies at Harvard, is at work on a memoir, forthcoming from Penguin Press. His editor, a Luna fan who e-mailed him out of the blue looking for a manuscript, is also Alan Greenspan's editor. "I'm hoping we can all go out to lunch together soon," Dean deadpanned. He and Britta are acting as music consultants for Noah Baumbach's as-yet-untitled follow-up to The Squid and the Whale, for which they contributed the film score. (A documentary about the end of Luna, Tell Me Do You Miss Me, was released last year.) They are also planning an early 2007 tour behind the new album. "I'm excited. I can't wait!" Britta said about the prospect of playing live again.

"Is that right?" Dean asked with a bit of mischief creeping into his trademark understated delivery, clearly pleased with what he was hearing.

Dean and Britta - You Turn my head around