“Bombs and bullshit fill the air” is the line that opens “Yesterday’s Hero,” a track from Dean Wareham’s new solo album, That’s the Price of Loving Me. It isn’t difficult to grasp the reference to Gaza, though it may be surprising to hear Wareham deliver an unvarnished sentiment of this kind. His latest album is infused with politics in a way that makes transparent a side of Wareham that has long existed, if not always expressed directly.

Wareham is best known as the founder and lead vocalist for Galaxie 500, a canonical dream pop act during the late 1980s that channeled influences like the Modern Lovers and Joy Division to become the platonic ideal of what an indie rock band should be. He went on to establish Luna, which similarly defined the New York scene during the 1990s through a sequence of stylish albums that included guest musicians like Tom Verlaine of Television and Sterling Morrison of the Velvet Underground. Wareham wrote about these heady years in Black Postcards (2008), a characteristically understated memoir that nonetheless revealed the trials and thrills of becoming an influential musician before digital streaming changed everything.

Since moving to Los Angeles in 2013, Wareham has focused on his solo work, recording with his wife, Britta Phillips, as well as acting occasionally and composing film soundtracks, specifically for director Noah Baumbach. One song from their new LP, “The Cloud is Coming,” was originally written for Baumbach’s recent adaptation of Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel White Noise. Closing the album, it has the refrain “I see no difference/Between the blue and the red/The cloud is coming for us all,” imparting a despondent, if not completely pessimistic, state of mind that Wareham has increasingly articulated in his latest recordings.