Peel Dream Magazine Shares Two More Songs From Upcoming LP

Rose Main Reading Room, the fourth full length by Peel Dream Magazine, is a lush, inviting headphones record; the kind of album made to accompany city bus rides and rainy-day solo trips to accidental destinations. The band, whose name nods to the BBC Radio 1 legend John Peel -- arbiter of all things underground, quality, and (it must be said) "cool" -- has since its inception been a genre-hopping experiment, jumping from motorik krautrock to shoegaze and space ago pop, and their newest work is a perfect starting point for the uninitiated, beckoning toward a newfound romance and nostalgia with their catchiest collection of songs to date. Rose Main Reading Room is out via Topshelf Records on September 4th, 2024.

Set to the backdrop of New York City and its towering landmarks -- The American Museum of Natural History, Grand Central Station, and the like -- songwriter Joseph Stevens weaves personal stories into the wider fabric of the natural world, touching on themes of instinct, animality, and evolution. On the memory stirrer "Central Park West", Stevens and his principal contributors, vocalist Olivia Babuka Black and multi-instrumentalist Ian Gibbs, evoke a woodland sound palette juxtaposed against drones and various electronics. It's paired with the welcome greeting of "Dawn", a song that revels in arpeggiating woodwinds and mallets, recalling the wide-eyed contemporary classical of Steve Reich and Sufjan Stevens.

Peel Dream Magazine's Joe Stevens writes about both: "Central Park West" is a first-person account of me wandering through Manhattan on a solo jaunt. A lot of the song references the Museum of Natural History, which has always fascinated me with its weird dioramas and quiet low lighting. I also walk through Central Park, the Upper West Side, and the Rose Main Reading Room at the New York Public Library on 42nd Street (which the album is named after). The song evokes a kind of woodland sound palette with flutes, banjo, and acoustic guitar, and it feels like a fun juxtaposition with the cosmopolitan stuff.  "Central Park West" is backed with another song from the new album, "Dawn", which is kind of Phillip-Glass-inspired and builds in a really pretty way. "Dawn" is this really simple tune about the beginning of a day and all of the opportunity it brings.

TOUR DATES:

Aug 08 Thu Lee’s Palace – Toronto, ON *
Aug 09 Fri Théâtre Fairmount – Montréal, QC *
Aug 11 Sun The Sinclair – Cambridge, MA *
Aug 12 Mon Elsewhere – Brooklyn, NY *
Aug 13 Tue Underground Arts – Philadelphia, PA *
Aug 14 Wed Union Stage – Washington, DC *
Aug 16 Fri Masquerade (Altar) - Atlanta, GA 
Aug 18 Sun Mohawk (inside) - Austin, TX 
Sep 07 Sat Zebulon - Los Angeles, CA # (Record Release Show)
Oct 10 Thu Desert Daze Fest - Lake Perris, CA

* = w/ Wild Nothing
# = w/ Goon

Track Listing:

Dawn
Central Park West
Oblast
Wish You Well
Wood Paneling Pt. 3
R.I.P. (Running In Place)
I Wasn't Made For War
Gems and Minerals
Machine Repeating
Recital
Migratory Patterns
Four Leaf Clover
Lie In The Gutter
Ocean Life
Counting Sheep

Photo Credit: Bryce Pulaski