Q&A: Peel Dream Magazine Explores New York and the Natural World on ‘Rose Main Reading Room’
IN EVERY PEEL DREAM MAGAZINE RECORD — There is a rich inner world spinning inside of it. Joe Stevens’ newest album, Rose Main Reading Room, is no different. Stevens named the album after a hall in the New York Public Library, one of the many places he frequented as a kid. The songs on the record revolve around his nostalgia for his time in New York after growing up upstate, and as a result, these songs seem to exist as the settings they’re written about.
Take “Dawn,” the first song you hear on Rose – It’s a fluttering, twinkly melody, vocalist Olivia Babuka Black murmuring in your ear: “Find your keys / Grab your coat / Lift the windowsill,” the sonic equivalent to a morning stretch and yawn. The track leads right into “Central Park West,” a stripped-down and thoughtful listing of wings in the American Museum of Natural History, the Audubon Society, and the New York Public Library. Listening to the interlude “Wood Paneling, Pt. 3” is like putting headphones on in an exhibition, watching a documentary on animals: “Monkeys appear so human; They have such a serious look of concentration on what they’re doing as they parody mankind.”
“I made up this thing in my head where, this museum about natural history, that it would kind of be a personal history,” Stevens tells me over a call. “Everyone has a natural history that you can think about and walk through in your life as an adult.”
Rose is Peel Dream Magazine’s follow-up to Pad, their 2022 record that suspended any semblance to guitar-driven music in exchange for gentle pop. Just as Rose tinkers with nostalgia, the music has a return to form in some ways. The music recalls acoustic indie from the early 2000s while maintaining the mod synths and la-la’s that are Peel Dream’s throughline.
Keep reading for our interview with Stevens about making what you want and his new record Rose Main Reading Room.
LUNA: When you’re writing these songs, do you know that you’re writing them for a record?
STEVENS: It usually starts out kind of innocently, just writing a melody or something that I like. It’s usually a big deal because I’ll have a drought of writing… There will be a long period for whatever reason that I’m not really writing much, and then I do start to write stuff again. It’s obvious in my mind that there’s going to be more stuff that comes out. I felt like I was consciously working on a record after the fact. I was like, oh, all along these songs are part of an album.
LUNA: I read that most of this album is inspired by time you spent in New York. Is that right?
STEVENS: Yeah. I had this idea about making the album about this theme of natural history... The Museum of Natural History, essentially, in New York. Originally, the idea was that every song would be a different hall in that museum. Listening to the record, you’d be wandering the halls of the museum.
I was fixating on some touristy New York things that I used to do growing up. I grew up just outside of the city, and we would go to Central Park and all the museums and stuff like that. For whatever reason, I fixate on Manhattan kind of nostalgia.
LUNA: I know you live in LA now. Was there anything that prompted you thinking about these excursions that you were going to as a kid?
STEVENS: I don’t know. Maybe on some level, I was feeling a little homesick or something like that, living in LA. Even though I like LA a lot better.
I made up this thing in my head where, this museum about natural history, that it would kind of be a personal history. Everyone has a natural history that you can think about and walk through in your life as an adult. That was this weird connection that was prompting some of that stuff about New York and the museum.
Credit: Bryce Pulaski
LUNA: I know you write compositions outside of Peel Dream Magazine. Does one inform the other at all when you’re writing music?
STEVENS: The music that I write outside of the band is always opening my mind up in a fun way. I do some sound-alike work where the music agency will be like, “Can you make something that sounds like this?” I’m like, sure, yeah I’ll try it. Then I have all these virtual instrument libraries. I’ll make something with a violin or whatever. I don’t have a conservatory background, I don’t play that instrument, and I don’t think about that kind of music on a daily basis. But the experience of fudging it for an ad or something like that lets me get my feet wet in some other musical universe stuff. I think it’s made me more excited to experiment with symphonic music and symphonic instruments.
LUNA: While writing this, you were referencing some music from the early 2000s. I was curious to what you were referencing or listening to?
STEVENS: I’ve been feeling like, almost from a trend perspective, that early-aughts indie frock is where the zeitgeist is, for me personally. That’s where I’ve been interested in finding inspiration a bit. I was definitely listening to a lot of Sufjan Stevens, Tortoise, The Shins… Just having fun, reveling in some older music… Of Montreal is another band I associate with the first several years of the 2000s. Wilco was another one, Yankee Hotel, Foxtrot. I think that there’s a really nice sweet spot between 2001 and 2007 where there was some music that is obviously really appreciated, but I don’t feel like there are a lot of artists mining that musical universe.
LUNA: Was that informing the album or was it just what you were listening to in the moment?
STEVENS: I think both. You are what you eat, you know what I mean? I become infatuated with an album or artist, I end up regurgitating them and admiring what they’re doing, trying to figure out ways to use that toolkit in my own toolkit.
LUNA: I read the Talkhouse interview you did with Jack [Tatum of Wild Nothing] and you had said that you don’t consider outside forces when it comes to making music. Do you feel inspired by other art forms when you’re making music? Or is it all cerebral?
STEVENS: I would say more of the latter. I wouldn’t say I’m directly pulling inspiration from an event or other piece of art or something… It’s more this private, somewhat unconscious thing. It’s constantly going on in my brain that I just… It’s part of how I breathe or something, that I just think about melody and music and stuff like that. That sounds really pompous to say it that way, but it’s just something that is a really big part of my life.
LUNA: The transition of sound from when you left New York, it’s evolved so much. I personally feel like you’re getting to a place where the tone and intention is really clear and solid. I don’t know how you feel about that, but I feel like this record is a perfect manifestation of how you work creatively.
STEVENS: Yeah, I think so too. I was surprised at how it turned out that way. It wasn’t a conscious decision to do that. When I made the first two records, I was just really into that universe and following my nose. That's what I wanted to do. When I made Pad, it was like a chaotic choice to stop doing the shoegaze thing to do this totally polar opposite thing. I hoped that there was this throughline, compositionally or something or personality wise, but it was not very obvious because aesthetically it was so different. A lot of people, like fans and journalists, seemed to disparage the decision to make that album, which bummed me out. I really just do it because I get really excited about one thing and I just have to make that thing.
For Rose Main Reading Room, the thing that I got really excited about inadvertently happened to be this blend. It’s not something that I set out to do on purpose, but it is kind of like what you said - It justifies it or vindicates some of the earlier stuff. When I hear the new record, it feels like I’m giving all of the albums a bear hug and accepting them all.
