Soft sell

Damon and Naomi after Galaxie 500

by Matt Ashare

Nobody applies for the job of cult hero. The hours are long, the pay's not good, and the gratification isn't as immediate or as categorical as full-on rock stardom. It's just something that happens. And lately it's been happening to Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang.

As the rhythm section for Boston's Galaxie 500 in the late '80s, the two, along with current Luna frontguy Dean Wareham, cast a Velvety spell that's continued to linger on the fringes of the underground. They inspired others like Minnesota's Low and Japan's Sugar Plant to weave their own minimalist dream pop, and they helped to define what people mean when they use the term indie rock.

Krukowski and Yang, who share a mortgage and run their Exact Change small publishing company out of a spacious Boston office, still make music as Damon and Naomi, feeding a small but loyal international following. But there is perhaps no truer measure of their growing cult status than the remarkable number of reissues bearing their names that have recently been made available. A Galaxie 500 four-CD box set, featuring all three of the group's out-of-print full-lengths and a disc of rarities, came out on Rykodisc late last year. Three of those four discs were released by Ryko as individual titles last month along with Copenhagen, a previously unavailable live recording made for Danish radio broadcast in December of 1990. And Sub Pop has just reissued More Sad Hits, Damon and Naomi's gorgeously moody 1992 duo debut.

"We seem to be turning into elder statesmen," remarks Krukowski over lunch at a Japanese restaurant. "It used to freak me out more than it does now. I'm still not sure I always agree with what people say about the significance of Galaxie 500. I'm just not sure we did enough musically, especially compared to Sonic Youth. They really did change the way people thought about music. But we do have imitators now. I think of us more in terms of bands that came and went briefly, like Mission of Burma or the Modern Lovers. They spawned a lot of imitators, but they didn't represent some fabulous fundamental change."

Nevertheless, the Galaxie 500 box set has done well for Ryko -- better, in fact, than the label expected. (The first printing sold out and the current Soundscan numbers are up past 6000.) Copenhagen stands as a rousing postscript of sorts to the plaintive, calmant story the box recounts -- a reminder that in the end Galaxie 500 could be a surprisingly muscular unit on stage. In the absence of the reverb-drenched, soft-focus production that dominated the band's studio albums, it's also much easier to hear how crucial Krukowski's tom-tom-heavy drumming and Yang's counter-melodic bass lines -- not to mention their songwriting contributions -- were to Galaxie 500's magic. (I've always thought of Wareham's Luna as Wings to Galaxie 500's Beatles, though a Sugar/Hüsker Dü analogy would probably be more appropriate.)

All the same, Krukowski and Yang were basically hung out to dry when Wareham called it quits. "The music industry is only prepared to deal with the frontperson," Yang points out. "And we were just the rhythm section. So literally the day after Galaxie 500 broke up we couldn't call a label and get anyone on the phone."

"The irony was particularly incredible," adds Krukowski. "I had been managing the band, so I was the one the industry dealt with on a day-to-day basis. It was very disillusioning."

It took considerable urging from Kramer, the producer who had worked with Galaxie 500, to coax Damon and Naomi back into the studio after the break-up. And he played a large role on More Sad Hits, contributing keyboards, guitar, and even a drum track to a collection of moving, minimalist songs that pick up where the strum-and-drone pop of Galaxie 500 left off. At least as commercially viable as Wareham's Luna debut, the disc received poor distribution on Kramer's Shimmydisc label and was languishing out of print before Sub Pop licensed the rights.

Krukowski and Yang have spent the past few years building up Exact Change, doing the rhythm-section thing in the psychedelic outfit Magic Hour, and turning toward the more introspective, folky aesthetic of the own music -- a change reflected in 1995's acoustic-guitar-based The Wondrous World of Damon and Naomi (Sub Pop). They've begun playing out more regularly, and have a new single on the British label Earworm. But even with all the interest in re-releasing their old work, Damon and Naomi is a project without a current record deal.

"Our new strategy," jokes Krukowski, "is going to be to tell labels that we just found something we recorded five years ago that was never released. That's probably the best way to get our new material out there." n

Damon and Naomi open for Yo La Tengo at the Met Cafe this Wednesday, May 21.