I thought that this moment might never arise. Originally scheduled for April 2020, the performance was delayed twice, maybe even three times by the spectre of Covid. Then, somewhat fortuitously, the venue rescheduled for the first full evening of the summer holidays (for teachers, at least). So, here I was, alive and expectantly waiting for the singular wave of nostalgia to empty on top of me. Was there ever a chance of disappointment? The last time I saw any incarnation of Galaxie 500 was in late 1989, at Trent Polytechnic, supporting The Sundays - the night that Alice (their vocalist) lost the power of speech. Galaxie 500 were ragged, raw and simply beautiful. Tonight could only be different, couldn’t it? I mean, it’d been over 30 years since that gig and the release of ‘On Fire’, the album due to be played out in its entirety this evening. Some stuff must get lost in the fire…

Starting with some more recent Luna material (Dean’s most recent band) and accompanied by another guitar and perfectly weighted rhythm section, the finger-picking style, suffused with gentle riffing, spread its ample, protective wings around a willing crowd of first timers and 40 something reprobates. Dean’s famously reedy, yet appealing vocal lithely wraps itself around some languid surfer sounds, laid back and slow motion in replay, reminding me of The Go Betweens and their sweet, tingly reverberations. He resembles a subtle wink of Robert Forster (no higher compliment, really), ruminating and telling stories, one about the suicide of Karl Marx’s daughter in the mid 1800’s. This part of the session essays surf indie for those that don’t surf and would rather lurk amidst the sand dunes. Another song is nonchalantly introduced with ‘It goes a little something like this.’

The refrains, the thrill of repeated chords, an ocean of love, simply offered, granted : we are off into an easy summer, relaxing smoothly into the groove. Still, they shimmer, each player gently pulling and grappling the metal strings into elegant, persuasive shapes. All cascades in slo mo, endless choruses, riffing on a riff. And the Galaxie hasn’t even opened up yet…

The importance of this band in my lifetime cannot be overestimated. They crafted a seemingly wistful trio of glacial albums between 1988 and 1990 and then disappeared. Yet, they had the uncanny ability to know, implicitly, the location of a late-teen’s heart, the ventricles, mainlining to the emotional centres of the brain, mining melancholy in bleeding pastels, a palette of vaguely hallucinogenic colours, the oil lamp still burning at 3am, beckoning you towards a great, grateful sleep. Not yet, just wait…

So, this stepping back, this slow emotional replay : I am 20 again, life’s possibilities still laid out in front of me. Dean intones ‘Jesus, can’t you see /I’m going round the bend’ and, oh my, there are tears in my eyes from the molten, open riffing, the improvised, almost jazz-like soloing. Here I am, only one song deep, agape in ecstasy, truth and beauty. I could leave it there but you really need to know more. A legacy is cemented in deliriously delightful feedback. 

‘Staring at the wall / Waiting for your call / So when will you come round?’ Dean Wareham captures slacker ennui, creates ramshackle beauty, allowing each audience member to become lost in the hazy grooves, gently jeweling as it all comes flooding back. At this point, I wish I had someone to exult with, yet I’m exuberant in my own private universe. 

‘Snowstorm’ is focused psychedelia : ‘And they’ve got nothing else to think of / And they’re letting me go home.’ This present tense narrative streamlines the reaction, stays organic, doesn’t need rehearsal, timeless in the truest sense. Songs like this build in layers, the long wide-ranging solos causing transport and I’m swiftly lost in superlatives. I’ll settle for cathedrals of sound - a moniker often tagged onto The Cocteau Twins ; yet, here, in the feedback haze, we remain lost and hauntingly alive. Here is purity, possession, a reminiscence upon existence : plangency in excelsis!!

Any reaction is visual : delicious candy floss waves crashing, fields undulating in lime green, caught in the breeze : ‘You said / It’s time to leave the planet’, followed by ‘Isn’t It a Pity?’ Dean becomes the lecturer in how to distil the universe into a guitar chord, generating mountaintops and wide open vistas : ‘ I can hear you when you’re sleeping / I can hear inside your dreams…’ As ‘On Fire’ turns to embers, ever smouldering,the band switch to ‘Tugboat Captain’ from inestimable debut album ‘Today’ with its endless refrain ‘There’s a place I’d like to be / place I’d like to see’ and all I can conjure up is the sound of multi-coloured dreamscapes. As songs go, it is achingly beautiful, beautifully perfect. There is a casual, uncluttered genius to all of this. 

Two encores later and Wareham retreats to the war cry of ‘Deano, Deano’ ringing in his and everyone’s ears. Luxury lies here, preserved. Eternal summer evenings peel off into the distance. All is fair, all is fine, we are here and now is where we need to be.

Words and Pictures by Hugh Ogilvie.