Peel Dream Magazine – Lie in the gutter

Lie in the Gutter, the lead single from Peel Dream Magazine’s new album Rose Main Reading Room, transports listeners into a lush, genre-hopping soundscape. The band’s fourth full-length album is perfect for those reflective city bus rides or rainy solo adventures. Joseph Stevens, along with Olivia Babuka Black and Ian Gibbs, crafts personal stories against the backdrop of New York City’s iconic landmarks, touching on themes of instinct, animality, and evolution.

The album’s tracks, like “Central Park West” and “Migratory Patterns,” blend woodland sounds with electronic drones, while “Wish You Well” and “Lie in the Gutter” recall the driving feel of their earlier work. “Dawn” features arpeggiating woodwinds and mallets, evoking contemporary classical influences.

Rose Main Reading Room, named after a hall at the New York Public Library, explores Stevens’ reflections on his childhood memories of NYC. The album’s diverse sound palette, from breakbeats to acoustic guitar-driven tracks, blurs timelines into a unique dreamscape.

Peel Dream Magazine has evolved since its inception, with Stevens’ music journey moving from krautrock to shoegaze, to the jazz and country-tinged baroque-pop of Pad. Now with Rose Main Reading Room, Stevens returns with a fuller, lusher sound, built on his previous works but creating a whole new destination. The album’s thematic exploration of natural world marvels is perfectly encapsulated in the pre-release single “Lie in the Gutter.”