Dream-pop. I'm not too sure what exactly constitutes the genre, but I'd imagine it's a bit like pornography: you know it when you see it. Last week, I saw it, and my friends did too, with 22° Halo and Peel Dream Magazine at Deep Cuts in Medford. The venue was dressed for Halloween, and the crowd was dressed for a Dickies Appropriation Convention. For every person was approximately four front pockets. In each was a dream.

The pair of acts had shared the stage at Baby's All Right in Brooklyn just a few nights before. The bill was one of those that would make any indie head foam at the mouth - two bands sharing a mid-sized fanbase and an impressively curated sound. The music is particularly great for the habitat of a college kid, including: walking around in pitiful angst, trying to find a fifth synonym for "juxtapose," and running a performative aux at the student cafe.

Then, something special happens when this kind of carefully produced, softly layered lo-fi goes live. Subdued vocals break out between buzzing guitar pick-ups, and pensive drum beats gain a new grounding. Indie rock picks up the "rock", and the "indie" is left for the crowd to define. It makes for the kind of musical submersion that makes you feel underwater, thick and viscous melodies getting caught in willing ear canals. It's different than what you feel when it comes from your headphones. It's noisier, more somatic. Perhaps it's just a different theory of dreaming.

Each band has about three guitars to make up for the mathematical configuration of dings and dangs. The sound at Deep Cuts, a venue which I am sure to return to, keeps the integrity of each of the instrumental parts. On the first days of true fall, it brings a warmth to the willingly brisk crowd. Dickies and thrifted fur only bring enough heat for the daytime. Once the cool night emerges, one must employ methods such as sonic embracing. It does the trick. We crowdsource an encore and mosh around in youthful fashion.

After the show, we hang around the merch table to chat with the front men. Joe Stevens of Peel Dream Magazine explained Rose Main Reading Room's (2024) cover design. To him, the album was the color brown, a shade comprised of "nature," overall, and the brownstones of New York. Will Kennedy of 22° Halo told us the story behind the graphic design of his latest Lily of the Valley (2024), completed by the team of him and his wife. He opened a flip-phone to show us a picture of his new baby. The interactions gave us, a group of under-planned and over-ambitious seniors, a new lease on life. A career in the elusive field of media had never seemed more in reach. Whatever it is, dream-pop had done the trick.

I'm embarrassed to see how many concerts I have described with the word "ethereal." But really, this one takes the cake. It was a soundscape of the undefined. It was the brain making sense of random neural activity, or maybe it was something more Freudian. I never took the Dream Gen-Ed, but whoever teaches it should've been in Medford with us. We were wide awake and dreaming.