On their second album, Agitprop Alterna, Peel Dream Magazine ask the musical question: At what point does a loving homage become a carbon copy? And is that necessarily a bad thing? After recording the group's first record, Modern Meta Physic, all by himself, Joe Stevens looked to others such as multi-instrumentalist Kelly Winrich and vocalist Jo-Anne Hyun to help with the quest of making the band sound as much like early-period Stereolab as humanly possible. The songs here have uniformly light and chugging rhythms, warm layers of vintage organs, ringing guitars, and looping vocal harmonies and could all have slotted in on side two of Peng! with no difficulties. Some of the tracks capture the up-tempo side of Stereolab perfectly, like "Emotional Devotion Creator," which comes complete with a driving motorik beat and an organ sound Jon Lord would appreciate. Others nail the breezy, stuck-in-a-dream sound the group did so well. "It's My Body" and "Permanent Moral Crisis" are fine examples. While there are a few stray moments of shoegaze that pop up here and there, and it can't help but sound a little different with Stevens holding down the lead vocals, the album is like listening to 40 minutes of a thoroughly researched and lovingly presented dissertation. It certainly does feel like the line from homage to rip-off is crossed when they lift details that were patently Stereolab, like vocal harmonies that sound as if the ghost of Mary Hansen is haunting the record, or when they use the exact same settings on the organ, or how Stevens gets a guitar sound exactly like that of Tim Gane. They dive so far into the imitation that they don't always remember to leave enough of themselves showing. That being said, the record is a nice mix of space age instrumentation, sweetly sung tunes, and gently hooky melodies, and it's clear that Stevens is adept at making a superb-sounding record. It's just too bad all those things were more or less stolen wholesale and passed off as something new. It's perfectly fine to love a band or a sound or a style and to incorporate those elements into your approach. Where Stevens and Peel Dream go wrong is by not adding anything distinctive or interesting to the mix. All that's left is a nostalgia trip that comes across like the Rutles minus the jokes or Beatlemania minus the mania. Somehow Agitprop Alterna is even more pleasantly derivative than their first album, and that's saying a lot! Hopefully Stevens can find something unique to apply his skills to next time around and Peel Dream Magazine can become something more than a crystal-clear copy of something great.