Joe Stevens has reinvented his Peel Dream Magazine project every other year dating back to 2018’s krautrock-indebted debut Modern Meta Physic, and continuing up through 2022’s sunshine-pop LP Pad. For his fourth album Rose Main Reading Room, he expands the outlet’s conceptual scope along with its sonic palette, invoking both breakbeats and Bach, Nirvana and Illinois-era Sufjan, across 15 tracks that serve as something of an alternate-timeline version of what Pad was first intended to become. Ultimately, though, minimalist composers like Phillip Glass and Steve Reich provide the glue that holds together this collection of songs, with repeated chord progressions lending a mesmerizing tranquility to the majority of the album.
Which is an apt reference point for an album that conceptually recalls Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi and its sequels, all three of which were soundtracked by Glass. Structured as a day in Stevens’ life, these songs wrestle with themes related to the natural world and its man-made counterpart with all of its chaotic city living and destructive wars. “It’s pretty abstract, but I wanted to walk listeners through some snapshots of my life,” Stevens tells us of the record’s concept, which was initially inspired by the individual wings of NYC’s Natural History Museum. “I’m like the lumbering bear but in my own habitat.”
With the album out today via Topshelf Records, stream along and read Stevens’ track-by-track breakdown of Rose Main Reading Room below.
1. “Dawn”
This track is like the dawn of a new day and therefore the dawn of the album. I wanted it to immediately evoke the wondrous, busy inner workings of the natural world just as the sun comes up in the morning. The woodwinds evoke movement/forward momentum, and there’s an obvious nod to minimalist composers Phillip Glass and Steve Reich. Over and under this symphonic thing, there’s a really simple melody and chord progression that repeats steadily like a pop mantra. The song gradually grows and becomes brighter, as if daylight is forming all around you. “Find your keys, grab your coat!”
2. “Central Park West”
This song again puts us right in the midst of nature—there’s literally some bird chatter at the top, as if picking up right where “Dawn” has left off at the beginning of a day. I came up with the simple two-chord idea as part of a would-be third album that I actually abandoned before making 2022’s Pad. It teleported me to a forest rich with browns, greens, and reds, the slow plodding chords evoking a lumbering bear. As this idea took shape that I wanted to write about New York, I decided that I wanted to juxtapose this wondrous natural world with the wondrous man-made world of Manhattan, and walk listeners through this imagined day-of sequence where I’m meandering through some of the city’s famous landmarks. It’s all based on memories of taking jaunts through Central Park, uptown, and the New York Public Library. As a refrain, different wings of the Museum of Natural History keep popping up to reinforce this kind of dizzying inundation of history and culture. It’s pretty abstract, but I wanted to walk listeners through some snapshots of my life. I’m like the lumbering bear but in my own habitat.
3. “Oblast”
This song feels the most connected to the bleeps and bloops of my previous record. An oblast is the Russian version of a state, and I initially came up with the idea for this one thinking about the Russia-Ukraine war. I thought it was interesting that this word for territory sounded like the word “blast,” as if this tussle over the territory was destined to be violent. I wanted to connect this idea of human and natural history to war and how we have developed bombs that are so technologically advanced that they can lead to the destruction of all technology and humanity if ever used. In that case, the future would become the past (the “stone age”). In the chorus, there’s a simple appeal for peace: “I could live for you, you could live for me, we could live for we.” It's more of just a wish that humans didn’t waste all their time and energy sparring over territory and killing one another.
4. “Wish You Well”
This is one of the more melodically adventurous ones, and incorporates breakbeats and more glitchy electronic elements. All of the sections keep smashing into each other in a way that feels fresh and exciting to me. It’s pretty manic, but there’s an internal logic to it and a nice payoff once you get to the end. I love stuff like that. The song is about the animality that is ingrained in all of us, often bringing out a cutthroat side of people. It kind of harps on competitiveness and the ways people try to climb in social status and stuff. “Wish You Well” is me trying to divorce myself from that kind of stuff.
5. “Wood Paneling, Pt. 3”
I love connecting my albums through musical, thematic, and aesthetic flourishes and creating eggshells for listeners to follow along to. My first two records had little interludes titled “Wood Paneling” (parts one and two), and I thought it would be cool to reprise the series on this record. The first one was a sound collage of ’70s TV ads, and the second one was a sound collage of John Peel on Radio 1. I searched for a while to try and find what kind of found sound would work for this record, and I came across an incredible old British documentary that talked about human evolution and family history. It struck an incredible chord with me, because I was working on a record about natural history and mining memories/experiences from my personal life and upbringing. It sounds like the narrator has humanity tied up into a neat little bow, but suddenly it ends with the horrifying sounds of monkeys screaming and it all feels undone. Musically, the tune is playing off mid-century “hold music,” but tinged with darkness.
6. “R.I.P. (Running in Place)”
This song ended up morphing a bunch, but I landed on this really simple, repetitive chord progression that essentially goes in circles and never really lets its own tension resolve. There’s been times in my life where I myself have felt powerless and ineffectual, unresolved, and going in circles. I wanted to spell that out with this unnerving, chaotic song. It literally feels like it’s falling apart as you listen to it. Being a musician is weird—you often feel like a failure and a mystery to family and friends. Even dead, in a way. I wanted to write about it.
7. “I Wasn’t Made for War”
This is definitely the most twee-/folk-inspired song on the record. I’m talking about the suburban world I was brought up in. Me and all the other little boys I knew were socialized to love war and glory—guns, fighting, sports, dirt, aggression, strength. I find it sad when I think about how I was programmed to think that any intellectual, emotional, or sexual deviation from the most basic male archetype was inherently wrong. It took me a long time to see my upbringing that way, and I wanted to write a song kind of reclaiming my own identity. In the song, I want to leave the old neighborhood behind and explore the big city. I want to leave the sparring over war and glory to the other kids. I’m happy with my partner, with the life I’ve created for myself.
8. “Gems and Minerals”
This is named after a hall in the Museum of Natural History. I originally wrote this for an ad, but it never got used (I can definitely see why) and I decided it would work as an interlude on the record. It’s got this optimistic, whimsical progression, but it’s juxtaposed with these glitchy, evil-sounding electronic elements. To me it evokes imagery of underground wonderment, metals and rare compounds being forged together through heat, time, and grandiosity. Almost like an underground factory.
9. “Machine Repeating”
This one’s about the endless roller coaster of emotions I feel on repeat every day. I’m talking about these ups and downs in this detached way, as if I’m just a cog in a machine where it’s all supposed to happen. I wanted the detachment to feel absurd, and get dark without being stereotypically emo or angsty. Musically there’s a callback to “Dawn” with these repetitive clarinet phrases, and a bit of a bossa feel, too.
10. “Recital”
This is based on my memories of performing at piano recitals as a teenager. I wanted to connect playing the piano with touching someone. I’m sitting in the rows of students, fixating on some of the girls that are performing as well. There’s this instinct churning just under the surface of this very civilized event, almost completely distracting me from the event itself. So there’s the natural world versus civilized world thing happening again. Musically it’s very woodland. I wanted the song to play with the kind of chord changes you would hear in classical music—I really wanted it to be subtle, but unmistakably classical-music-ish, which you can clearly hear in the way the chord progressions resolve. Like some of Bach’s simpler pieces, which I would have played at these sorts of things.
11. “Migratory Patterns”
This is an interlude that evokes the migration of a flock of birds, again bringing in repeating woodwind phrases. I wanted to invoke heights, awe, and wonder. The clarinets create a beautiful cacophony like the birds shouting as they soar through the sky. One strays from the pack, and you hear it flying solo. After a while it rejoins the others as the cacophony resumes.
12. “Four Leaf Clover”
This was one of the earlier songs I wrote for the record. At the time it felt dangerously sappy—and it is, especially for a Peel Dream Magazine song, but I just really liked it. The chord changes are kind of Nirvana-ish. The song is kind of an ode to my partner, talking about how lucky she is to be so amazing, and about how I in turn hate myself sometimes. But it’s also a play on words, about how she’s been a good luck charm for me. Like, things have been better since I’ve been with her.
13. “Lie in the Gutter”
I had a boss once who would quote literature constantly, and one of his most common phrases was a mangled Oscar Wilde line: “Oh, to lie in the gutter and stare at the stars.” He was kind of a douche, but the beauty of it stuck with me. The song is a simple tune about trying to not get mired in your everyday bullshit, trying to keep your eye on the beauty in life, and in what we can all aspire to.
14. “Ocean Life”
Originally, the whole record was going to have songs that represented different halls in the Museum of Natural History—this one is the Hall of Ocean Life, which I call out in the song “Central Park West.” The lyrics don’t literally talk about the ocean, it’s more about the ocean as a symbol for the infiniteness of ourselves. The verse is based on a recollection I had from tour, driving through the Rocky Mountains while it was snowing. Musically I wanted this to have this whimsical folk thing merged with the contemporary classical of Phillip Glass and Steve Reich (again, repeating woodwind phrases). The song structure is kind of strange because there’s only one verse but two choruses. Stuff like that is exciting to me.
15. “Counting Sheep”
This one was originally scrapped, but I brought it back at the end of the mixing process because I felt like it was a powerful way to close the record. I wanted the last song to feel like a warm blanket, like the listener is coming home. I also thought it would be cool to end the record with night time, since we begin with “Dawn.” In that way, the album almost becomes a full day. It has a ’90s/Y2K pop thing with breakbeats and stuff. I’m not sure if I’m talking to the listener or to myself, but I’m trying to reassure someone that everything will be OK in the end. Whatever happened, it’s over now, it’s in the past, so stop putting it on your shoulders. It’s something I try to tell myself as much as I can.
