This is Our Music [This is Our Music & Copenhagen]

Personnel: Dean Wareham (vocals, guitar); Naomi Yang (vocals); Damon Krukowski (drums, percussion, background vocals).
Liner Note Author: Byron Coley.
Recording information: Barbue, Copenhagen (12/01/1990); Noise, New York (12/01/1990); Barbue, Copenhagen (1990); Noise, New York (1990).
Photographers: Renaud Monfourny; Colin Bell; Norman Gholson; John Zielinski; Ray Agony.
What turned out to be the final Galaxie 500 album was also arguably the band's most accomplished. Not that the earlier records lacked either charm or ability, but right from the charging, chugging start of "Fourth of July," the amazing single and leadoff song from This Is Our Music (even including a cheeky Velvet Underground reference from "Candy Says"), the trio here sounds like they could take on anyone. Kramer's production and the use of reverb from past releases all once again contribute to Galaxie 500's magic, while the individual members continue to sound fantastic. Somehow, though, everyone aims higher, Dean Wareham's singing is among his finest and his guitar goes for the truly epic more than once, Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang are even more perfectly in sync than before, often being very bold without losing their intrinsic warmth. From a generally different approach, Galaxie 500 here easily equaled the heights of their U.K. shoegaze contemporaries and often trumped them -- "Summertime" in particular is a stunner -- while making a lot of contemporary American indie rock seem fairly dull and workaday. The choice of cover version this time out is astonishing -- Yoko Ono's "Listen, the Snow Is Falling," with Yang singing beautifully over Wareham's echoed guitar strums, and Krukowski's barely there percussion cascade. The switch to a full-band arrangement, far from destroying the song's spell, makes it even more intense and gripping a listen. The subtle touches throughout the album add immeasurably to its magic -- the soft ringing bells shimmering through "Hearing Voices," the quiet synth on "Spook," and Kramer's self-described "cheap flute" on "Way Up High." It all concludes with "King of Spain, Pt. Two," a reworking of the flipside of "Tugboat" -- while it wasn't a planned finale, it as an unexpectedly right bookend to a career, and ends both Galaxie 500 and This Is Our Music on a perfect note. [The 2010 reissue of the album on Krukowski and Yang's 20/20/20 label pairs This Is Our Music with the 1990 live recoding of the band that was released by Rykodisc as Copenhagen in 1997.] ~ Ned Raggett