The Room Share Nostalgic New Single Magic Games From Doom Pop! Album

Liverpool post-punk originals The Room have shared Magic Games, a lighter and more nostalgic moment from their new album Doom Pop!, which is out now via 9×9 Records.

The single tells the story of a young boy playing in his grandmother’s parlour in the early 1960s. It is pieced together from surreal, fragmented images of ghost riders, ancient books and figures in armour, the kind of half-remembered details that make up a childhood.

Beneath that cosy setting, though, the song has one eye firmly on the present. The Room use those impressionistic images to comment on a confusing, authoritarian-tinged world, where reality is obscured by false narratives and information overload, and the listener is left as an observer trapped inside a disorienting, high-stakes game.

“In contrast to the darker tone of much of the album, ‘Magic Games’ is based on early memories; playing with toy knights and scuba divers in my grandparents’ parlour while listening to Vaughan Monroe sing ‘Ghost Riders in the Sky’, while a distantly remembered Grandad slept in his armchair with a bottle of his favourite beer next to the fireguard,” explains singer Dave Jackson.

“The way a child’s mind turns multiple sources of inspiration into fodder for adventures in the mind. A big tin Fire Engine. The Just So Stories. Book illustrations of the Spanish Armada and Francis Drake,” he adds.

Doom Pop! is the band’s third album since they reformed in 2022, and it was inspired by the strange days we are all living through. Across its eleven hook-driven songs, it tackles the rise of authoritarianism, disinformation and war, while also drawing on science fiction, horror and the eerie, cinematic feel of liminal spaces.

The record was recorded and mixed at Ark Studios in Liverpool and co-produced by Jackson and Steve Powell, whose credits include Michael Head & the Red Elastic Band, Autour De Lucie and Echo & The Bunnymen. It was mastered by Pete Maher, with cover artwork by Genevieve Baker.

“We aimed at shorter, sharper, more pop-oriented songs than on our previous album,” says Jackson. “While the songs ‘Drones’, ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’, ‘Continent of Lies’ and ‘Doom Patrol’ concern the paranoia and destruction emanating from worldwide warmongers and oligarchs, other songs are influenced by a love of science fiction, horror and liminal spaces.”

Those influences run right through the album. The title track The Room is about the film Stalker and its story of a man who guides “tourists” through a Zone corrupted by alien technology, while Temptation Harbour references three films by the late Hungarian director Bela Tarr.

No One Comes Here From The Town is a response to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting Of Hill House. Trespassing tries to sum up Dave Jackson’s own unproduced science fiction screenplay of the same name in a three-minute pop song, with a tangential nod to David Bowie’s Drive-In Saturday. Stories, meanwhile, celebrates an inspirational storyteller who once said, “Stories told thrice become our possessions”.

Magic Games follows a run of singles that showed off the band’s melodic post-punk sound, all jangling guitars, relentless momentum and distinctive drumming. Those included Drill, Baby, Drill!, The Room and Things Have Learnt to Walk that Ought to Crawl, a re-imagining of their 1982 cult classic and the only older song to appear on the album.

The Room were formed in 1979 by Dave Jackson and bassist Becky Stringer, during the golden years of northern English post-punk. They quickly became favourites of John Peel, recording four sessions for his show, and also appeared on The Whistle Test.

Their 1984 LP In Evil Hour saw them work with Television’s Tom Verlaine and producer John Porter (Roxy Music, The Smiths, Billy Bragg). Their early catalogue also includes Bitter Reaction (1980), Indoor Fireworks (1982) and Clear! (1983), plus the 1985 Jackpot Jack EP, which was built from recordings made for Janice Long’s BBC Radio One show and Saturday Live.

In those years The Room toured the UK and the USA and shared stages with The Fall, The Birthday Party, Bauhaus, Southern Death Cult, Violent Femmes, Tom Verlaine, John Foxx and The Red Guitars. Melody Maker described them as one of the more maverick and overlooked groups in the city, praising the way the music matched the “concisely articulate emotion” of Jackson’s words.

After the band split in 1985, Becky and Dave went on to form Benny Profane, Dust and Dead Cowboys. Dave has also recorded under his own name and as The Room in the Wood with Paul Cavanagh.

Since reforming in 2022, Jackson and Stringer have been joined by guitarist Darren Brown, keyboardist Ethan Kyme, who also adds theremin to Drill, Baby, Drill, and original drummer Clive Thomas. Tom McCabe drums on The Room and Stories, and Helena Jacks sings backing vocals on Continent Of Lies.

The reunited band have played Shiiine On festival and Preston Pop Fest, toured or shared bills with The Red Guitars, Blue Orchids and Trupa Trupa, and played in Estonia with Shelton San. The Spill Magazine has called them a band hitting a fresh creative stride – “sharp, assured and bristling with ideas”.

Doom Pop! is out now on CD and limited edition mixed eco-vinyl, with distribution in North America through Darla Records. It is also available everywhere digitally, including Spotify, Apple Music and Bandcamp, where the band’s 2023 album Restless Fate and 2024’s The Telling can also be found.

Magic Games sits second on the eleven-track album, which opens with the urgent Drill, Baby, Drill and closes with Drones. The full Doom Pop! track list runs as follows.

1. Drill, Baby, Drill
2. Magic Games
3. Things Have Learnt to Walk That Ought to Crawl
4. Trespassing
5. Temptation Harbour
6. Doom Patrol
7. Continent Of Lies
8. The Room
9. No One Comes Here from the Town
10. Stories
11. Drones

Fans will be able to hear the new songs live in November, when The Room play two shows in Preston, including an all-dayer at the New Continental, before heading to London’s Dublin Castle.

Nov 3 – Preston @ The Ferret (with Swell)
Nov 8 – Preston @ New Continental – all-dayer
Nov 13 – London @ Dublin Castle