Dean & Britta

As members of 1990s/2000s outfit Luna, Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips hid their songcraft behind overwhelming guitar swirls. Today, as an independent duo, the couple trade in ambling, aging-hipster pop romance and unlikely, often contradictory happenstance. Listening to 2003's L'Avventura or last year's Back Numbers, it's too easy to imagine Wareham and Phillips cavorting gingerly in some harmless CGI simulacrum of the Milky Way, exchanging knowing winks and smiles the way they exchange wry, adoring verses. Retouched squirts of synthesizer, effects-pedal burbles, and drum-machine thumps pad out sentiments dryly delivered, like these, from L'Avventura's "Moonshot": "I know a girl from a tribe so primitive/She can call me up without no telephone/See all the wonders that you leave behind, enshrined in some great hourglass." Call 'em the perfect soundtrack to a bubble bath and a bottle of fine wine, but don't miss 'em and don't leave your significant other at home; either way, you'll be sorry.
Mon., Feb. 11, 7:30 p.m., 2008