When during the pandemic Peel Dream Magazine’s Joseph Stevens ditched his native New York for the West Coast, the result was Pad, a strange and somewhat unsatisfying conceptual album about getting kicked out of his own band and at one point joining a cult. Whereas on debut album Modern Meta Physic and 2020 breakout Agitprop Alterna the band sounded like the harmonic convergence of classic Stereolab and Isn’t Anything-era My Bloody Valentine, Pad was a sharp veer left into baroque pop, chamber music, almost experimental territory. It was an interesting departure, but the tunes felt inchoate and unfinished, as though they were lacking some essential component.

Whatever was missing on Pad, however, Peel Dream Magazine have found it again on their latest release, Rose Main Reading Room. It feels like they have succeeded at what they were trying to do before and have managed to synthesize an array of obvious influences into a collection of songs that are frequently beautiful. It is an album saturated with an escapist nostalgia and underpinned by a vague melancholy that makes for a terrific listen. There is
something drowsy, sleepy about much of it too, every tune a kind of lullaby, as soothing as a drop of eucalyptus oil on a pillow. You might say it’s the perfect soundtrack to an afternoon nap.

Full of lilting arpeggios and spiralling, pirouetting woodwind arrangements that intertwine nicely with the bleeps and loops of synthesizers, there is something decidedly floral, fragrant about the album. This is grassy meadow music, the sonic backdrop to a hammock swaying in an arbour. On “Central Park West”, Stevens describes a casual stroll through New York that is both vivid and dreamlike, and on “Recital” he sings “I can smell the shampoo in your hair/ I can smell the month of May,” an evocative lyric that captures much of the spirit of the album.

While it doesn’t always work — take the irksome vocals on Oblast, for example, that sound like a student theatre warm-up routine — none of the songs on Rose Main Reading Room are long enough to outstay their welcome and are peppered with wonderful, wistful melodies. “Four Leaf Clover” and “Wish You Well” are the stand-out tracks here, for they sound like the work of a band that knows what it wants to be, shaking off some of that burden of influence and ready to stand on its own two feet.

Order Rose Main Reading Room HERE