60 albums
1995 - Luna - Penthouse

Luna - Penthouse (1995)

In 1994, for want of anything better to do, I started a fan website for “Galaxie 500 and related artists” and followed it shortly after with a mailing list for fans of the bands. Luna, of course, were one of those “related artists” and Penthouse was the first album released while the website and mailing list existed. It was also on the tour supporting Penthouse that I first met fans I knew until then only through the Internet.

Sadly, I’ve lost the mailing list archives from before 1999 (you can find some earlier posts that I also forwarded to alt.music.galaxie-500 but not far enough back), and the Wayback Machine only has captures back to 1997, so I don’t have any evidence of how the album was received back then. However, in the 1995 end of year survey it only clocked up 16% of the vote and came in third of their three albums! It gradually crept and by 1998 it came top in the survey, and did in every subsequent survey until I stopped doing them a couple of years back.

I’ve obvioulsy listened to Penthouse a lot in the 29 years since its release so it seems a bit of a fraud listening to it for this series, but… my blog.

• I’ve always had a soft spot for a tortured rhyme, and Chinatown has Dean’s girlies/earlies one!
• Sideshow by the Seashore - We can all go mad together, that’s what friends are for.
• Moon Palace is the song that’s most likely to be my Luna earworm, popping into my head unannounced at random times!
• Double Feature doesn’t have the title in the lyric so I’m never entirely sure that the song I’m listening to is Double Feature.
• 23 Minutes in Brussels is pretty much Luna’s theme tune - it’s invariably part of a show’s encore, and was the last song they played when they split up, and gave one of its lyrics for the title to the farwell tour rockumentary.
• Lost In Space also doesn’t mention the title, I probably sonetimes wonder if its called Double Feature!
• Rhythm King has hypnotising jangling jewellery.
• Kalamazoo also doesn’t have the title in the lyric but I know that it’s the one with the nonsense chorus! So I’m OK with this one!
• Hedgehog asks “are you a fox or a hedgehog?” - I think I’m probably a fox!
• Freakin’ and Peakin’ would be the perfect way to end an album - although, it didn’t for most people because the CD had…
• … a cover of Serge Gainsbourg’s Bonnie & Clyde performed with Laetitia from Stereolab, and, I guess is the perfect way to end an album.

And that’s Penthouse. All killer, no filler!