by Chris Polley (@qhrizpolley)
The mid-2000s, in retrospect, were wild as hell. If I told a random sample of 100 music obsessives that I listened to all my music on a silver device called a Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra for five solid years of my young life, how many of them would know what in the world I was talking about? I mean, I also had an iPod Shuffle for jogging and my girlfriend at the time won a Zune at some event, which she gifted to me, but the point remains: How music was enjoyed was in a heavily transitional period, and the sonic landscape of music largely followed suit. Blog-rock was at its zenith, though it certainly wasn’t called that at the time, and a proliferation of historical influences and niche subcultures fully available in the open sandbox of the internet meant that so many genres and styles were fair game for essentially anyone with a $300 audio interface and a knack for obtuse but inviting melodies.
For Peel Dream Magazine, led by New Yorker ex-pat Joseph Stevens, this wild west frontier was similarly formative. As stated in an interview with The Luna Collective, the influences for his band’s new LP Rose Main Reading Room are apparent within a few minutes of a single play-through: Sufjan Stevens, Stereolab, Broadcast, Tortoise, Of Montreal, Sigur Rós, Wilco, and The Shins. Most of these artists are still active today, and some were active before the turn of the millennium, but all their records of and overall prominence during the ‘00s (or as my friends and I refer to them, the “naughty aughties”) were resoundingly singular, and for one of the acts in that list, burned cringingly into the pop culture zeitgeist by a depressed Zach Braff and manic pixie Natalie Portman. Nevertheless, this brand of—for lack of a more familiar term—delicate experimentalism that fell between indie rock and folk, or combining electronic music with post-rock flourishes, was perfect fodder for an entire generation weaned on the magnanimity of the overarching term “alternative” just a decade prior.
Dammit if Stevens and his various players of xylophones, woodwinds, and drum machines haven’t managed to straight-up make the best full-length record of the 2000s, just twenty years later. Lead single “Wish You Well” would be labeled retro-kitsch pop if it weren’t a delicious facsimile of Lætitia Sadier’s aforementioned Anglo-French art-rock band, thus making it homage to a microgenre that was already avant-homage to ‘60s psychedelia—Inception homage, if you will. It’s so tightly composed, though, and with just enough of a tinge of dissonance deep within its cozy wall of sound, that it’s impossible to discount as derivative, especially when no one’s been even vaguely aping Stereolab besides Stereolab for thirty years now. Later in the album, “Lie in the Gutter” pushes the point further and past the point of comparison, with Olivia Babuka Black taking on not only bubbly onomatopoeia duties but also a Free Design-esque tapestry of sunshine pop alongside the whirring synths and steady bass lines. It’s so resplendent that it’s nigh-impossible to do anything but admire how outwardly the song wears its influences on its sleeves.
“Central Park West”, the airy banjo-plucked proper opener after a very ornate introductory track, reminds us that Oscar nominee and Broadway source material provider Sufjan has been a force in the industry at all levels ever since he broke through the blogosphere with Michigan and that fifty states nonsense back in 2003. Flutters of multi-instrumentalism and call-and-response backing vocals that still allow plenty of breathing room, once again essentially recreate something that has long preceded it while engaging in composition and mixing that is so carefully put together that it’s hard to do anything but admire the beauty. Similarly, the infectious keyboard riff and snare stuttering on the wordless “Migratory Patterns” resemble at least three different tracks on the other Stevens’ even more iconic Illinois from 2005, but with an almost Alexandre Desplat film score level of sophistication and ease that it transcends even the most obvious comparisons.
The other inspirations throughout the release are less directly noticeable, and this is arguably where Rose Main Reading Room shines even more. “Four Leaf Clover” is a sparse but elegant and restrained acoustic pop track that feels almost otherworldly in how stately its different layers are gently placed on top of each other, weaving in and out ike a pair of socks rustling through crisp bed sheets. Meanwhile, “Gems and Minerals” is an instrumental jam that is just strange and vibrant enough to sound like a cathartic and genuinely playful f-word (“fusion”) of prog-rock and, well, another f-word that has been out of the vernacular so long that it took me a solid, concentrated minute of diving into the ol’ mid-00s memory well— folktronica.
Nostalgia can be quite a nasty drug when it gets into the wrong hands or ears, but when it’s done with aplomb and respect, precision and innovation, it only adds to the ever-growing mosaic of time-tested baroque pop music. Peel Dream Magazine, known already for trying something completely different than the shoegaze-y dream pop on their first records with 2022’s largely solo Stevens effort Pad, have found a way to both bridge the gap and extend it both backward in time and forward in aesthetic with their latest. It’s the kind of richly freeing pop music that makes a teen dizzy with glee, which is a feeling many of us haven’t been privy to since zip files of MP3s and ripped CDs on iTunes were opening worlds in the suburbs to satisfying sounds so many of us thought were going to die with MTV’s 120 Minutes in 2003.