If the best songs were always sung with a tear in the eye, then The Dream Machine’s latest single, Things That Make Us Cry adds to the canon of the saddest, most beautiful songs to seek hope as the end of the road comes into view.
Drawn from their third album, Fort Perch Rock, released on Fri 27 February 2026 via Run On Records, the Merseyside five-piece’s heart-wrenching expression of loss is cut with anthemic instrumentation to lift hearts whilst simultaneously nursing one broken in two.
Returning from a wild eight-date run around UK grassroots venues which took place through November, The Dream Machine returned home to swiftly announce their biggest ever headline show. Crossing the churning tides of the River Mersey from their New Brighton home, the band is set to play the 1,200-capacity Liverpool O2 Academy on Fri 27 March 2026 in a celebratory one-off prior to a new schedule of festival appearances.
Having already released the upbeat new wave pop of Flowers On The Razorwire at the same time as announcing that album three was ready to go, The Dream Machine’s uncompromised vision of vivid, meaningful lyricism and analogue, head-turning songcraft is a torch carried from their previous records into the making of Fort Perch Rock. Winning fans with their 2022 debut, Thank God! It’s The Dream Machine and 2024’s James Skelly-produced follow-up, Small Time Monsters, psych abandon blends with moments of meticulous grandeur across a new, 12-track exploration of untethered inspiration.
Breaking down the sun-specked maudlin moments of The Beach Boys, decoding the happy/sad equation worked out by The Beatles on Golden Slumbers and distilling the dark majesty found in the work of Phil Spector, Things That Make Us Cry finds The Dream Machine putting found instruments to work on a bittersweet song of resignation.
Songwriter and lead vocalist, Zak McDonnell says: “’Things That Make Us Cry’ is me doing my best Phil Spector and Brian Wilson impression. It was recorded on an out of tune piano and a massive kettle drum that I think somebody found in a skip. It’s a total admittance and eventual acceptance that everything is falling apart. I remember working on it in the morning on a piano in Toulouse on tour, with the sun beating through an open door. It’s a pretty sad song for such an amazing time.”
Recorded and self-produced between studios on the Wirral and in Liverpool, The Dream Machine’s Fort Perch Rock album is set to be released on multiple formats, including digital, CD and special edition, coloured vinyl editions. A limited, band store-only butterfly effect vinyl version is to be released with a one-off, glow in the dark 7” EP of covers that pays tribute to the Motown girl group, The Shirelles.
Whilst echoes of the past resound throughout the band’s growing catalogue of songs, The Dream Machine are as quick to quote Dr Dre, Mac DeMarco, Blossoms and King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard amongst recent and current influences caught between the lines of their latest work. Rising above all the musical, film and literary references is the imposing edifice of Fort Perch Rock itself, a sea-facing, historic point of defence as the Irish Sea and the River Mersey meet. A chief landmark in their hometown of New Brighton, it’s the band’s chosen totem to the salty air, dropped ice creams and lost arcades of coastal life.
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