Dean & Britta Play Galaxie 500 New Zealand Tour Announced

Co-headliners on the knockout first The Others Way Festival 2024 lineup announcement, indie-rock royalty Dean & Britta aka Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips will soon be playing the songs of Galaxie 500 throughout Aotearoa as spring turns to summer.

Born in Wellington, Wareham's family eventually relocated to New York City, which is where the songwriter first met fellow Galaxie 500 founders Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang (aka Damon & Naomi). Recognised as key figures of 1980's US indie-rock, shoegaze and slowcore — Thurston Moore gushed that Today is "the guitar record of 1988" — Galaxie 500's oeuvre encompasses the classic three album run of Today, On Fire (1989) and This Is Our Music (1990). An oft-covered group whose influence reverberates through works of Low, Liz Phair, Xiu Xiu, Neutral Milk Hotel and The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Galaxie 500's new compilation Uncollected Noise New York ’88-’90 launches later this month, "their most comprehensive collection of unreleased and rare archival material ever," making 2024 an absolute bumper year for Aotearoa fans.

Author of highly entertaining 2008 memoir Black Postcards, Dean Wareham's follow-up group Luna (founded with members of NZ's The Chills and The Feelies) has had an equally illustrious run, eventually welcoming Britta Phillips into the fold in 2001. A Michigan-born artist whose own multi-faceted journey includes 2016 solo album Luck or Magic, an acting career and reaching young audiences worldwide as the singing voice of animated TV rock star Jem (!), Phillips' first album with Wareham as Dean & Britta L'Avventura was unveiled in 2003. Luna wrapped up their initial era in 2005, yet Dean & Britta maintained their partnership. They married in 2006 and together released a variety of albums, EPs and original soundtracks for films including director Noah Baumbach's The Squid and the Whale, sharing their 2020 Quarantine Tapes long player in 2020.

Headlining venues in Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin alongside their The Others Way Festival performance, lucky attendees can look forward to Dean & Britta with drummer Roger Brogan playing the timeless works of Galaxie 500 in late November / early December — plus "they’ll be throwing in a handful of other gems from the sublime Dean Wareham songbook" (I'll hand paint a '23 Minutes in Brussels' sign to wave around at the Auckland show). All brought to you by The Others Way, Banished Music and Strange News — presales are available this Friday and general public tickets available from Monday, do not dawdle...

Dean & Britta Play Galaxie 500

Wednesday 27th November - The Crown, Dunedin*
Thursday 28th November - The Loons, Lyttelton*
Saturday 30th November - The Others Way, Auckland
Sunday 1st December - Meow, Wellington*

Presale tickets from 10am, Friday 6th September
General tickets from 10am, Monday 9th September

Tickets from Banished Music
*Subscribe to presale at www.banishedmusic.com/subscribe

Hit play on Galaxie 500's 'Tugboat' from 1988's Today...

Here's Dean & Britta's sparkling 'Words You Used To Say' from 2007's Back Numbers...

Press release:

When The Others Way first lineup was announced last week, there was an audible gasp across the country at the news that Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips were heading down our way as a trio, set to play the iconic songs of seminal slowcore band Galaxie 500. After the first gasp came the pleading questions from Dunedin, Christchurch, and Wellington… “What about us?”.

Good news, friends - with the news that The Others Way, Banished Music, and Strange News have teamed up to bring you shows in each of those fair cities!

Yes, these were the songs that set in motion the remarkable career of Wellington-born Dean Wareham, who followed his time in Galaxie 500 with the extraordinary second act that was Luna, with a lineup that eventually came to include singer-songwriter, musician - and original singing voice of Jem from Jem & the Holograms! - Britta Phillips.

In the years that have followed the last Luna release, Dean & Britta have gifted us with a steady stream of brilliant albums, EPs, and soundtracks, including their stunning work for American indie hit The Squid and the Whale.

While they have plenty of releases on the horizon we’d love to tell you about but can’t - yet - both solo, and with some very exciting friends, we also have a very exciting Galaxie 500 release to celebrate in the form of Uncollected Noise New York ’88-’90, a generous new collection featuring outtakes, rarities, and more. What better time for Dean & Britta, with drummer Roger Brogan, to head down our way for a performance of those dreamy tunes that started it all.

As if that wasn’t enough, rumour is they’ll be throwing in a handful of other gems from the sublime Dean Wareham songbook which, as Uncut Magazine pointed out in a review of Wareham’s 2021 solo album I Have Nothing To Say To The Mayor Of L.A., contains countless “unimpeachable masterpieces”. Suffice to say, this is a once in a blue moon opportunity to bathe in the aural glow of these magnificent numbers. We can’t believe our luck.