Description:
Dean Wareham – That’s the Price of Loving Me (2025)
Review:
Dean Wareham is a relaxed psych-pop loverman on his sun-dappled fourth solo album, 2025’s That’s the Price of Loving Me. The follow-up to 2021’s I Have Nothing to Say to the Mayor of L.A., the LP is also notably Wareham’s first with producer/instrumentalist Kramer who helmed his first band Galaxie 500’s classic recordings and last worked with Wareham on their final 1990 album This Is Our Music. Joining them is Wareham’s longtime partner bassist/vocalist Britta Phillips, along with drummers Roger Brogan and Anthony LaMarca, and cellist/bass harmonica player Gabe Noel. Whether it’s the presence of Kramer or the hushed nature of Wareham’s music, or both, That’s the Price of Loving Me has the immediately familiar feeling of a classic Galaxie 500 or Luna album. This is especially true on cuts like “Mystery Guest,” “New World Julie,” and “Bourgeois Manque,” hypnotic guitar anthems that recall the spirit of the Velvet Underground’s late-’60s smoky, dark sunglasses and leather jackets. There’s also an organic warmth to the production, marked by analog instrumental textures and a big, reverb-laden atmosphere. It’s a spectral, cinematic album, evoking arid spaghetti western landscapes, as on the opening “You Were the Ones,” where Wareham croons of a doomed cowboy partnership as slide guitar sprinkles moondust on his wagon trail. He sings, “Together, we rode/Into the haze/And everything there/Was coming in waves/You were the ones/I had to betray.” Elsewhere, as on the title track, he plays the romantic sage, where the price of his all-consuming passion is to dream away time and space. He sings, “We’re out of canticles to learn/Out of melodies to burn/Out of silk and out of suede/Out of cities to invade.” The album, with its loungey, brushed shuffle grooves and sparkling guitar riffs, has its own intoxicating pull borne of the magical, decades-old chemistry between Wareham and Kramer. That’s the Price of Loving Me might pull you into a golden vortex of their shared reverie, but it’s a small price to pay. — AMG
Track List:
01 - You Were the Ones I Had to Betray
02 - Dear Betty Baby
03 - Mystery Guest
04 - New World Julie
05 - We’re Not Finished Yet
06 - Bourgeois Manqué
07 - Yesterday’s Hero
08 - That’s the Price of Loving Me
09 - Reich der Träume
10 - The Cloud Is Coming
Media Report:
Genre: dream-pop, indie-rock
Origin: Los Angeles, California, USA 
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)
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