Mia Joy returns with Comet, a slow drift shared with Peel Dream Magazine

Comet is a slow, twinkly drift from Mia Joy and Peel Dream Magazine, and the first thing Joy has released in three years. It is warm and unhurried, and it is one song rather than a statement.

Joy is Mia Joy Rocha, from Oak Park, Illinois, who sang with the Chicago Children's Choir and released the Gemini Moon EP in 2017. In January 2021 a label announced her signing alongside a new song called Haha, and her debut album Spirit Tamer came out that May. The Celestial Mirror EP arrived in 2023, and then nothing until this.

Peel Dream Magazine is Joe Stevens' project, and its mini-album Taurus came out last year. Stevens saw Joy play at Lodge Room in Los Angeles, where he used to work, and they shared a bill at Empty Bottle in Chicago last year. Comet was made remotely, with stems sent back and forth. "The final version is so warm and nostalgic," he says.

What comes out is slow and twinkly, soft at the edges. It sits near the Sundays and early Stereolab, melody left to float. The lo-res video, a montage of Joy in Los Angeles, suits the song better than a plot would.

It is for the listener who takes Cat Power at her stillest, who plays the High Llamas on a Sunday and does not need the song to go anywhere.

What does not work is the size of it. Comet is a standalone single with nothing dated behind it, just a note that more new music is in the works. A drift this short has to earn its second play on atmosphere alone, and atmosphere is all it sells.

As a re-entry it does the job. As a record it is good and slight, and the album after Celestial Mirror is still unknown. 3.5.

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