Dean & Britta, 13 Most Beautiful: Songs For Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests
Featured Album
A dreamy soundtrack to Warhol's silent 1964-66 footage
In 2008, onetime Luna bandmates Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips wrote music to accompany 13 of Andy Warhol's iconic four-minute-long screen tests for a Warhol Museum exhibition. Now compiled as a full album plus eight remixes, the songs — for personalities including actor Dennis Hopper, the Factory manager Billy Name and Edie Sedgwick's husband Paul America — are mostly dreamy soundscapes that make most sense playing alongside the flickering black-and-white silent images the artist shot between 1964 and '66. "Silver Factory Theme" recalls the woozy drone of the Velvet Underground, while "Ann Buchanan Theme" is a simple slice of atmospheric drum machines and synthesizes.
The most successful parts of 13 Most Beautiful are the fully realized songs. "It Don't Rain in Beverly Hills," a gently throbbing electro-pop tune, is topped by Wareham's reverb-heavy electric guitar. "They said you belonged on the silver screen," he sings to accompany Edie Sedgwick's sad-eyed stare into the camera. "Oh my God, you are so beautiful." Phillips's sweet vocals brighten Bob Dylan's "I'll Keep It With Mine," which is dedicated to Nico. And Wareham happily growls through the Velvet Underground's "I'm Not a Young Man Anymore" as the track's circular riff surfs a propulsive beat. It's cocky, gritty, and the perfect soundtrack to footage of a young Lou Reed sipping Coca-Cola in his dark sunglasses like a real rock 'n' roll badass.
