Rose Main Reading Room

シューゲイザー、スペース・ロック、アヴァン・ポップ、クラウト・ロックと今まで独自のポップセンスを土台に、ロック / ポップ内をガンガン越境してきたUSインディ出世魚ピール・ドリーム・マガジン。名門TOPSHELF移籍という予測不可能を経てリリースされる最新作『ROSE MAIN READING ROOM』は最もキャッチーな内容となった挑戦作!

先行シングル"LIE IN THE GUTTER"のステレオラブとヨ・ラ・テンゴが合体したかのような、構築された演奏とその間を泳ぐようなフワフワしたシンセのフレーズが聴いてて即癖になる!また絶妙過ぎる疾走感の醸し出し具合もGOOD! NYとその周辺をうろつく人々の本能や動物性をテーマにしただけあって、アーバンとトラディショナルが混ざり合いつつ、稀代の麗しキュートなインディナンバーになる辺り、BBCの伝説DJジョン・ピール氏からバンド名を拝借しただけのセンスとパワーはあります!

Breeze pop auteur Joseph Stevens has used his band Peel Dream Magazine to explore some of the more under-traveled waves of indie pop influence. The earliest PDM albums were rocking affairs with a strong resemblance to Stereolab at their most electric, softening significantly into Baroque orchestral pop along the lines of Van Dyke Parks and post-Pet Sounds Beach Boys on 2022s Pad. The fourth album from the project, Rose Main Reading Room, further refines Stevens loving tribute to these reference points, but also goes deeper into new influences which get hidden in the layers of subtle production on what amounts to an album of finely crafted headphone candy. The Dots and Loops-era Stereolab-styled chord progressions of opening track "Dawn" coast in on spirals of arpeggiating strings and woodwinds more akin to Philip Glass most pop-friendly arrangements, with bells twinkling in a gentle rainstorm around vocalist Olivia Babuka Blacks muted, low-key singing. The Baroque sound of Pad continues with the fluttering flutes of "Central Park West," the web of burbling woodwinds and exhaling strings on "Migratory Patterns," and the dreamy glockenspiel countermelodies of "Four Leaf Clover." In addition to the more switched-on upbeat rocking of "Lie in the Gutter," theres a fairly boldfaced homage to Belle & Sebastian on "I Wasnt Made for War," a song whose acoustic guitar strums and sweetly melancholic verses sound borrowed directly from Tigermilk. Perhaps the most interesting development on Rose Main Reading Room is Peel Dream Magazines embrace of the highly obscure and short-lived intersection of indie pop and electronica as it happened in the late 90s. At that point, and with very little fanfare, bands like Bowery Electric, Land of the Loops, Adventures in Stereo, specific players on the Darla Records roster, and others all started experimenting with friendly drumnbass beats and scratchy drum samples, resulting in a blissed-out and bumbling type of electronic music worlds away from the all-night rave sounds they were attempting to re-create. Its a specific sound thats close to but not quite the same as the more sophisticated sounds Air and Cornelius were achieving around the same time. Stevens and friends seem aware of this lesser-known detour in indie rock history, blending space age bachelor pad melodies with submerged breakbeats on "Wish You Well," and using blurting synth basslines and sunny drum loops on tracks like "Gems and Minerals." Peel Dream Magazines central ambition remains creating opulent pop on Rose Main Reading Room, and the songwriting is beginning to rise to the level of intent and detail put into the meticulously cross-referenced arrangements, making it the bands best work to date and showing promise for the next chapter. ~ Fred Thomas