A trio composed of indie music’s foundational members – Dean & Britta & Sonic Boom –  have announced the forthcoming album A Peace of Us (Carpark Records)—an LP comprised of diverse holiday tunes filtered through their musical imaginations. The album will be released on November 22. 

Dean & Britta, well-known from their work defining a genre with Galaxie 500 and Luna, join Sonic Boom (Spacemen 3), another bastion of indie’s collective adolescence, to bring to life a collection that draws from early ‘60s pop, garage, country, James Bond soundtracks, Christmas carols, and electronica. Dean Wareham recalls a sentiment from his DJ friend Chris: “You can experience all the emotions of Christmas through music: love and hate, joy and heartache, nostalgia, regret, anticipation, and frustration.”

Today they share the first taste of the album via their take on Willie Nelson’s  “Pretty Paper”  – rendered here as a duet between Britta and Sonic Boom, their pulsing synth-heavy production updating the song for a darkened nightclub rather than a bright honky tonk.  Wareham shares, “this was a hit for Roy Orbison in 1963 and it’s a pretty song but the lyrics, about a man who sits alone on the sidewalk outside a department store selling ribbons and paper, are sad.

“and in the midst of the laughter, he cries.” 

Britta arranged this in the style of our synth-heavy score for the Noah Baumbach / Greta Gerwig film Mistress America.”

Dean & Britta & Sonic Boom’s venture into a holiday album was organic, spurred by a few cover tunes over the years, a Christmas special during the pandemic, and finally collaborative sessions between Dean & Britta in L.A. and Sonic Boom in Portugal. The trio all contributed vocals, with guitars by Wareham, bass and keyboards by Phillips, effects, and mixes by Sonic. The result is an album of exploration as well as comfort, “like Bing Crosby…on acid,” Britta adds, the tracklist a reminder that the holidays are complex and tragicomic. 

As is often the case with holiday merriment, the album has a soft undertone of the bittersweet. Wareham sings one of David Berman’s final songs, “Snow is Falling in Manhattan,” one Dean believes is “destined to be a holiday classic.” Its lyrics foreshadow Berman’s tragic death: “Songs build little rooms in time / and housed within the song’s design / is the ghost the host has left behind.”

This collection steers clear of the usual Christmas chestnuts, but fans of classic indie haze may find a new favorite in “Peace on Earth / Little Drummer Boy” (created for Bing Crosby and David Bowie’s 1977 TV duet). Wareham notes that “Our favorite version is the German one by Marlene Dietrich, so that was our jumping-off point.” All three sing this one together: Wareham’s tenor, then Sonic Boom’s thrumming baritone, and finally Phillips’ soothing contralto making the plea for peace.

If collaboration is the fuel, peace and mutual understanding is surely the fire, and A Peace of Us has us gathered around it. “Christmas is mostly for children anyway,” says Dean. Sonic adds, “Or the inner child in all of us. Goodwill to all men. Hopes and fears for the year to come. And light in the darkness. Where this festival began.”