[Cover photo credit to Ayethaw Tun]
Today, Chicago-based Psych-Pop multi-instrumentalist Elijah Montez, the frontman and songwriter of Daydream Review, has announced their debut LP Leisure due out April 7th, 2023 via Side Hustle Records. The project’s first single, “Have You Found What You’re Looking For?“, which addresses capitalism, is out now.
Daydream Review will be taking the new music around Chicago this Spring in celebration of the release. Venues include Empty Bottle this Friday, January 27, G-Man Tavern, Cole’s Bar and will conclude on May 26 at Schubas Tavern.
Diving into the album’s meaning, Daydream Review explains:
‘Leisure’ is about the ever-present tension between the desire for free time, for personal enjoyment and leisure, and the demands that capitalistic society places on those desires, and how it restricts the ability to enjoy that free time. Your job and work, to me, seem to be consistent specters that haunt your ability to enjoy your free time, knowing that those demands are always awaiting you when your free time comes to an end.
Leisure, as a concept, became something almost otherworldly and that much more desirable, something you dream about when you have so much time funneled into work, and the repetitive act of balancing those two ends up being something almost hypnotic, and I tried to channel all of that into the sonic qualities of the album.
When performing live, the band consists of Montez and Kaitlyn Murphy (harmony vocals and auxiliary percussion), as well as a rotating group of friends who help fill out the band’s live sound.
