• News

• All

Feb 10, 2016 By Christopher Roberts Photography by Luz Gallardo Dean & Britta

Britta Phillips is known for several things. She’s been a member of Luna since 1999 and then was in Dean & Britta with her husband and Luna bandmate Dean Wareham. Back in the ‘80s she was the singing voice of Jem in the cult cartoon Jem and the Holograms (recently made into a poorly received live action film Phillips had a cameo in). She has also dabbled in acting, including appearing in the 1988 film Satisfaction in which she was a member of the fictional band that also included Justine Bateman and Julia Roberts. Now she is finally releasing her debut solo album, Luck or Magic, on April 29 via Double Feature Records. Below is the album’s first single, a cover of Evie Sands’ “One Fine Summer Morning.”

Luck or Magic contains five originals and five covers. Philips started recording the album with Scott Hardkiss, a DJ and electronic music pioneer. The two started trading playlists for inspiration, as Philips tells it in a press release: “He sent me Sly & The Family Stone, Funkadelic, Marvin Gaye, Low Motion Disco as well as sparse recordings like Arthur Russell’s ‘Our Last Night Together.’ I sent him Chromatics, Glass Candy, LCD Soundsystem, Kraftwerk, T. Rex, Beach House, and Lana Del Rey. And we crossed over on artists like Nancy Sinatra, Shuggie Otis, and Air.”

Philips and Hardkiss worked together on the album for a year, but in March 2013 Hardkiss unexpectedly died in his sleep at the young age of 43. She took a break from the album, but eventually regrouped with producer/mixer Eric Broucek (a house engineer for DFA).

Of the five originals on the album, Philips describes the inspiration behind them as such: “I suppose the songs deal with love and desire through different personas - from coy to cocky, from complete control to total surrender, at times within the same song. I wanted the album to be both earthy and dreamy, and to capture the feel of a few decades without sounding like any particular one. Maybe Luck or Magic sums things up. That was a lyric fragment that jumped out at me one day, because it relates to both love and music for me. I moved to NYC as a teenager to be a ‘rock star.’ I had a lot of luck, but no magic. That came years later, after I met Dean. I’m lucky I didn’t make a record back then. I wouldn’t like it now.”

Below is “One Fine Summer Morning,” followed by the tracklist and album cover.

Luck or Magic Tracklist:

01 “Daydream”
02 “Do It Last”
03 “One Fine Summer Morning” (Evie Sands, 1969)
04 “The Million Dollar Doll”
05 “Drive” (The Cars, 1984)
06 “Fallin’ In Love” (Dennis Wilson, 1970)
07 “Luck Or Magic”
08 “Landslide” (Fleetwood Mac, 1975)
09 “Wrap Your Arms Around Me” (ABBA’s Agnetha Fältskog, 1983)
10 “Ingrid Superstar”