A night of bewitching ambient pop with duo Dean & Britta

A dreamy night lay in store for a sold-out crowd at the Museum of Fine Arts this weekend. The ambient pop of Dean & Britta lifted the audience into a gauzy, translucent realm where the gap between reality and imagination nearly disappeared.

Dean Wareham is best known as the founder of hypnotic, slowcore pioneers Galaxie 500 and Luna, while partner Britta Phillips also was in Luna. They sang a deliciously subdued mix of music from these previous bands, as well as from their own two albums, which have established them as Mensa Society-level cult figures.

The Harvard-educated Wareham, a New Zealand native, exhibited a low , purring voice that made him seem like the son of Leonard Cohen on such tunes as "Singer Sing" and Luna's "Bonnie and Clyde," which opened and closed the show, respectively. Phillips added understated, ethereal harmonies, although she also offered the night's most impassioned vocal on the rebirth-of-love song, "You Turned My Head Around ," which broke rank with the controlled but consistently bewitching tone of the evening.

The duo was ably backed by calming keyboardist Lara Meyerratken and 19-year-old wonderboy drummer Anthony LaMarca, playing only his second gig with them. Vibraphonist Sean McCaul appeared occasionally with a soothing array of reverb-enhanced mallet fills. Wareham steadied the course with his carefully inscribed guitar playing, which was simple but shimmering. And Phillips played bass with a poetic grace.

It was a clinic of ambient pop, as Dean & Britta established a simultaneously intimate yet faraway feel in a number of songs that literally addressed the subject of dreams. To quote one lyric, "The night time is sweeter than a dream" from "Since I Lay My Burden Down." The night built in quiet ecstasy to Galaxie 500's "Hearing Voices," Luna's "Chinatown," and Galaxie's "Tugboat."

Vibraphonist McCaul's short but enriching opening set of solo instrumentals ranged from covers of Frank Sinatra to Frank Zappa.