Peel Dream Magazine

Peel Dream Magazine represents the musical pursuit of New York-based musician Joe Stevens, a multi-instrumentalist and home-recording artist whose hazy, Stereolab-indebted indie pop first arrived on 2018's Modern Meta Physic. Stevens brought in a full band to help on 2020's Agitprop Alterna, took a turn toward more orchestral chamber pop with 2022's Pad, and deepened the production for the headphone-geared 2024 effort Rose Main Reading Room. The Peel referenced in the project's name is legendary BBC DJ and tastemaker John Peel, whose ethos as a champion of creativity Stevens cites as an influence on his own approach. Written and recorded in his New York apartment in 2017, Peel Dream's debut album, Modern Meta Physic, is rooted in late-'80s and early-'90s indie pop, dream pop, and college rock replete with hypnotic, fuzzed-out organs and distant, hushed vocal melodies. After signing with Slumberland Records, Stevens expanded his operation to a full band ahead of the album's October 2018 release. The membership of the live band rotated frequently, and when it came time to work on new music, Stevens employed this shifting cast of characters in the process. One standby was his friend Kelly Winrich (of Delta Spirit), a multi-instrumentalist who worked closely with Stevens as other musicians like vocalist Jo-Anne Hyun and drummer Brian Alvarez dropped in to lay down tracks, too. The result was music that had a looser, more live-sounding feel and featured era-specific male-female vocal harmonies. Late 2019's Up and Up EP was the debut of Peel Dream's new sound, and their second album, Agitprop Alterna, followed in April 2020. The project shifted gears yet again for their next full-length. 2022's Pad moved away from propulsive indie pop in favor of gentler arrangements that included chimes, strings, woodwinds, and other instruments more in line with breezy chamber pop. Stevens took his referential muse to various places on 2024's Rose Main Reading Room, an album that could sound on the surface like the kind of Stereolab worship he'd gotten into in the past, but hid references to rainy-day twee, collage pop, and the very niche indie electronica scene of the late '90s within its detailed production. ~ Timothy Monger