Luna

In the wake of Galaxie 500's acrimonious breakup following their 1990 swansong This Is Our Music, Dean Wareham formed Luna to satiate his poppermost desires. As acting guitar hero extraordinaire for the Dream Pop crowd, Wareham's vision of weightless, guitar-based pop -- as complemented by jiggling rhythms and his own signature lyrical sarcasm -- came to beautiful fruition on Luna's 1992 debut Lunapark, which featured the driving "Anesthesia" and the elegiac "Goodbye." Subsequent Luna records throughout the 1990s reinforced the band's mastery of space-pop with a jarring rhythmic edge, the pinnacle of which was reached on 1995's glorious Penthouse. That album's best moments -- the smooth-as-fresh-pavement "Chinatown," the ringing guitar hook on "Sideshow By The Seashore," and the arrestingly dynamic "Freakin' And Peakin'" -- portray Luna at their apogee as a most forceful, yet elegantly graceful pop outfit. Four years later, they began covering Guns N' Roses songs on record, a development that usually spells the beginning of the end for any band.