Search Results for:

RUN ON RECORDS / MODERN SKY UK

The Dream Machine

Small Time Monsters

    ‘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 Time 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.


    STAFF COMMENTS

    Barry says: Bold, inventive psychedelic indie that clearly draws influence from the North West's rich musical heritage, and displays that influence without ever sounding like a pastiche. Crisp, full of warmly familiar melodies and brilliantly conceived harmonies.

    TRACK LISTING

    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


    Latest Pre-Sales

    172 NEW ITEMS

    E-newsletter —
    Sign up
    Back to top