Before the holiday season becomes impossible to avoid and Mariah Carey assumes control of the airwaves, we still have a couple installments left of A.V. Undercover season nine. In the wake of garage duo Skegss comes Peel Dream Magazine, the Los Angeles indie rockers who have already genre-hopped across four albums, including 2024's Rose Main Reading Room. When he brought his bandmates Olivia Babuka Black and Ian Gibbs to Marquez Clásico this fall, Joseph Stevens quickly plucked a Beta Band tune from the list: "Dry The Rain," that anthem of abiding which was originally released in 1997 before joining The Three EPs compilation.
You might notice that this cover isn't quite as sprawling as The Beta Band original, which saw a spike in popularity after the debut of High Fidelity. Stevens is no stranger to trancelike repetition, like the chant that forms in "Lie In The Gutter." In a sense, Peel Dream Magazine begins at the end, skipping the more restrained first half and jumping right in to the heightened emotion of the back half with swelling synths and Stevens and Black's harmonies. Give it a listen and we'll see if we can move more copies of The Three EPs than Rob Gordon.
