Toronto psychedelic pop quartet Mr. Joy serve up a blissful buffet of sounds on their sophomore album, The Dreamer’s Workbook. Set for release on March 6th via digital platforms with an accompanying picture book, it highlights the band’s effort at recording a concept album based on their dream diary scribblings and fuzzy recollections in the moments after waking. Songs ebb, flow, and drastically transform from one sonic passage to another with the soft-focus logic of an unconscious mind.

Utilizing an idiosyncratic process of musical creation, each member of Mr. Joy plays multiple instruments and wears various hats. Singer-songwriter Blob performs the majority of the band’s vocals, alongside his shared use of samplers with Steven McPhail. Harrison Forman plays guitar, bass, and synth, while Asher Gould-Murtagh sings, drums, engineers, and mixes.

While Mr. Joy has primarily existed as a recording project, they’ve gained attention for their mesmerizing live performances with artists such as Yves Jarvis and Matthew “Doc” Dunn. Blob’s hand-painted animation work can be seen in the video for White Fence frontman Tim Presley’s “I Saw Snow Today”, while Gould-Murtagh has worked as a producer/engineer with artists including Born Ruffians, Doomsquad, Zones, and many more.

To some listeners, Mr. Joy’s tranquil lysergic sound may recall ’90s groups such as the Apples in Stereo and Olivia Tremor Control, or their ’60s sunshine pop predecessors with warped Beach Boys harmonies. For the band’s part, they unroll a laundry list of influences including Sun Ra, Van Dyke Parks, Hal Blaine, Spacemen 3, J Dilla, the films of Len Lye, and BBC radio programs from the original psychedelic era.

While they describe this album’s recording process as their most traditional to date, written together in a room and recorded mostly in that same room, it’s hard to place within the context of most modern rock bands. The Dreamer’s Workbook travels from the bleak synth-scapes and sound collages of Mr. Joy’s debut Alien Selfie EP to the singer-songwriter dreamlands of their 2018 Goodbye Sadness LP.

“Dream Cure For A Dog Lover” opens the album like a pack of puppies exploding off the leash of an unstable animal walker, with its stomping tambourine rhythms and springing sound effects propelling an infectious melody.”Tomorrow’s World” slows the pace with a serpentine flute swirling through the air of burbling, backmasked vocals and sundazed guitar strums. A trilogy of instrumental songs entitled “Between Dreams” parts 1, 2, and 3 drift from languid twang into trippy tape loops before culminating in a hazy piano mirage that wouldn’t sound out of place on a release from Animal Collective. Across nearly eight minutes, “Fly Away” showcases everything Mr. Joy does best from spare vocal tone-floats to slowly grooving psychedelia and a final passage of dubby noise like Dennis Bovell at his most damaged.

“We all basically play the studio,” explains the band in a joint statement. “Once you start creating samples, you can be making drum loops out of spoons run through a delay pedal and that’ll be the beat. Or you can grab something from a cassette and completely warp it into this unidentifiable lead instrument. It’s like curating sounds for everyone else to interact with. The band is like this organism; you feed it your samples and it turns them into something bigger.”

- Jesse Locke