The Dream Machine – Small Time Monsters (Released 12th July 2024)

Description

//Run On Records / Modern Sky UK//

£26.99 – Dinked Edition #296

• “Yellow Magick” coloured vinyl*
• Bonus “Colonel Mustard” coloured 2 track 7” *
• Signed photo print *
• Numbered edition *
• Limited pressing of 500 *

*EXCLUSIVE to Dinked Edition

£25.99 – Indies Karloff Green Colour LP

£24.99 – Black LP

‘Small Time Monsters’, the second full-length album from The Dream Machine, is set to be released this April on Run On Records/ Modern Sky. 

If 2022’s critically-acclaimed debut album ‘Thank God! It’s The Dream Machine…’ was their first and most wild child, then ‘Small Town Monsters’ is its refined younger sibling. The psychedelia, euphoric choruses, flashes of surf guitar and B-movie references are all there, amongst the familiar reflections of life in their beloved and faded seaside town of New Brighton, but this time the wilder elements are controlled, the songs packed into three-minute pocket symphonies. 

Lead single Frankenstein is an anthem for the sugar-rush generation, an infectious, rattling earworm that recalls everything from haunted rockabilly to the sun-drenched melodies of Blossoms. Elsewhere on the album, the pulsating surf-stomp of ‘Cindy’s Eyes’, a small-town story of unrequited love, has a chorus to fill the most cavernous arena. 

Produced by The Coral’s James Skelly, the album was partially recorded at The Dream Machine’s rehearsal space, then stitched together in Skelly’s

Kempston Street Studios. There’s a refined, more literary quality to singer and primary songwriter Zak McDonnell’s lyrics; explorations of everyday life, teenage doom, B-movie monsters, family turmoil, and coming-of-age tales in the familiar backdrop of life in modern Britain. ‘Small Time Monsters’ is the sound of a band breaking free from the small town into the big world.

BIO:

Psychedelic pop with an anthemic punch, Wirral’s The Dream Machine hit their comeback stride with outrageously infectious single Frankenstein, out March 14th on Run On Records. The single is a precursor to their second full-length album, to be followed by a summer festival run including Liverpool Sound City, and their own headline tour. After 2022’s critically-acclaimed debut album Thank God! It’s The Dream Machine…a host of Radio DJs – namely Steve Lemacq and Stuart Maconie – voiced their support for the group. It led to regular plays on BBC6music and Radio X, then live support slots with established big-hitters like The Coral, The Charlatans and The Mystery Jets, before headlining their own run of gigs, ending the summer as The Lathums special guests at a sold-out Castlefield Bowl. In a year filled with highs upon highs, the band made valuable use of time spent touring, absorbing music to throw in the melting pot of new material, namely the wild energy of Fontaines DC, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Blossoms, Arcade Fire and The War On Drugs.

Having grown up amongst the faded fairground glamour and beachfront arcades of their native New Brighton, Merseyside, they caught the ear of The Coral’s James Skelly while still teenagers and has been a constant influence. Skelly stepped in on full production duties for Frankenstein, recorded late last year in his own Kempston Street Studios.

Singer and primary songwriter Zak McDonnell explains Frankenstein’s weird and wild origins: ‘Frankenstein is a confession of love from somebody disfigured by immaturity and misery. A helpless tale of hope and anguish. Heart to heart, man to monster. It’s a pulsing teenage freak show romance driven by desperation and despair. I wanted it to sound like Phil Spector producing the Ramones in the 80’s or a twisted take on one of the songs from Fraggle Rock’. All things considered, and with Frankenstein already garnering national airplay, 2024 promises to be The Dream Machine’s biggest year yet.

TRACKLISTING
Side A
1.Frankenstein
2.Cindy’s Eyes
3.My Father’s Son
4.Holding On
5.Cathedral

Side B
6.Tonight, I’ve Got Heaven In My Arms
7.Posters Of You
8.Wind-Up Bird
9.The Horse
10.Wolfman
11.Bring Back the wonder

Bonus 7”
1. Little Baby
2. Please Stay