Audiopile Review: Peel Dream Magazine step even further away from their fuzz-laden kraut-pop origins on Rose Main Reading Room, their most accomplished and inspired album to date. While their last album, Pad, was a stripped-down effort focused on intimate songwriting in the vein of sun-soaked ‘60s pop psychedelia, they go all out with this lush, expansive set that comes full circle on their Stereolab fixation. While their debut, Modern Meta Physic, is surely indebted to the earlier sound of Stereolab circa Mars Audiac, they’ve leaped towards the vibrant sound of the groop during their late ‘90s Cobra and Phases era. Each song brimming with vibraphone, looping woodwinds, interlocking guitars, cooing vocal chants, chiming bells, and the bubbling of vintage synths. The breezy, near-effortless feel also brings to mind Air’s pop-forward effort Talkie Walkie or Kit Sebastian’s effervescent vibe on their pair of Mr. Bongo LPs. Perfect listening for these still warm post-summer/pre-fall days.

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 age 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. Across its fifteen songs, Rose Main Reading Room ultimately proposes a world of marvels and compelling complexity: “Oblast” cheekily prods at mutually assured destruction; “Ocean Life” explores the infiniteness within ourselves; while “R.I.P. (Running in Place)” unpacks an all too familiar stagnation. It’s all part of, and crucial to, Rose Main Reading Room’s transportive power, ever reaching for the wonder and magic of the world we live in.