The album Noah Baumbach called “timeless”
Noah Baumbach, the indie mastermind behind emotionally rich and critically acclaimed films like The Squid and the Whale, Frances Ha and the Academy Award-nominated Marriage Story, has always used music as an essential instrument in his cinematic toolbox.
From Robbie Robertson’s haunting theme in The Meyerowitz Stories to David Bowie’s ‘Modern Love’ scoring the dancing scene in Frances Ha, Baumbach’s films are as much aural as they are visual experiences. Clearly, music and sound are just as crucial to the director as moving images. However, there’s one album in particular that he thinks is a “timeless” masterpiece: Galaxie 500’s On Fire.
An American alt-rock band that emerged in the late 1980s from Boston, Galaxie 500 was composed of guitarist Dean Wareham, drummer Damon Krukowski, and bassist Naomi Yang. The band became known for their minimalist, dreamy soundscapes, steeped in introspective lyrics and hypnotic melodies. While not immediately recognised in the mainstream music scene, their influence has persisted despite the band breaking up in 1991.
Baumbach’s journey with Galaxie 500 commenced during his college days at Vassar, inspired by a wholly coincidental yet nonetheless intriguing figure named Johnny Wareham. “At Vassar, there was this guy a couple of years ahead of me who was sort of notorious,” Baumbach recalled, “There was a story that he had rolled out a window and been fine, which added to the mystique”. When he found out that this Boston band had a band member with the same last name, the director felt compelled to listen to their music.
Speaking with Pitchfork, the director dove into the heart of his love for On Fire, describing the band’s sound as “timeless” and beautifully paradoxical, being “lo-fi in a way that feels totally giant at the same time”. This sense of contrast persisted for Baumbach, who continued to praise how the album sounds “familiar, but, at the same time, like something you’ve never heard before”.
Long after the prompt of Johnny Wareham had dissipated and the love for the band endured, Baumbach’s connection with Galaxie 500 would deepen when he eventually collaborated with the proper Wareham – Dean. “I became close with Dean because his band Luna did the music for my second movie, Mister Jealousy,” Baumbach revealed. After providing music for the director’s 1997 sophomore feature, the pair have worked together in “one way or another” ever since.
For Baumbach, Wareham’s vocal range is integral to Galaxie 500’s magic. He explained how Dean’s vocals can range from “really pretty, like a wash of sound” to a “sharper, barbed voice, depending on the song”. Explaining an intriguing fact he read in Dean’s memoir, the director said: “I read that he sang a lot of the falsetto parts on Galaxie 500 records because his nerves made him sing high, which is interesting”.
Further singling out Wareham’s vocal capabilities, Baumbach continued to praise the vocalist’s unique accent. He described it as a “blend of New Zealand and American” and that it is “impossible to imitate”.
Whilst not a mainstream album by any means, fans of Baumbach should undoubtedly check out this band that the director loves and collaborates with creatively. The director has made timeless films that will be enjoyed for decades to come and has demonstrated excellent taste in music for his soundtracks and composers for his scores. So, if he says an album’s timeless, we’ll take his word for it.
