Q&A: Peel Dream Magazine Breaks Out of Himself on Fantastical New Album ‘Pad’

Q&AMusic

Oct 17

☆BY Aleah Antonio ☆

THERE’S A STRING THAT TIES ALL OF — Peel Dream Magazine’s albums together. “There’s been a weird theme of retro interior design,” Joe Stevens, the name behind Peel Dream Magazine, tells me from his home in Los Angeles. “On the cover of our first record, it says something like, ‘From the faraway meditation pads comes Modern Meta Physic’ … ‘Pad’ is also slang from the ’60s — it’s a lexicon that puts you into a musical aesthetic.”

This is Stevens’ answer when I ask him how he came up with the title for his newest album, Pad. He lists various connections to the title — a Stereolab record, a Beach Boys song — before explaining the through line of retro interiors throughout his discography. His avant-pop debut, Modern Meta Physic, features a woman sitting on a modular sofa that encompasses the quasi-futuristic aesthetic of the ’70s. “Wood Paneling Pt. 2” on the breakthrough sophomore album Agitprop Alterna tunes a radio to what sounds like John Peel’s introduction on BBC Radio 1. This time around, baroque pop, among a dozen other influences, is integral to the sound of Pad.

To think of Pad in the context of Peel Dream Magazine’s other records is shocking at first, mostly because Peel Dream Magazine listeners and critics identify their fuzzy, guitar-driven elements as the crux of the band’s identity. Pad is a deviation from their previous shoegaze approach, diving into a pool of lightness and poise. Stevens’ voice is malleable enough to hum like a synth and vibrate like a drum machine, blending the melodies into their ethereal and contemplative form. This sonic pivot is as inspired as it is necessary, pushing Peel Dream Magazine to a world outside of its expectations.

Pad is a loose concept album based on a fictional story in which Stevens gets kicked out of Peel Dream Magazine. By whom and for what reasons are unknown, leaving the listener to fill in the blanks. The album cover reveals the plot like a storybook, leading with a poem that is continued in the record’s liner notes: “All alone he sips his tea, burns his incense, scrolls TV / And peering out beyond the fore, longs to make it back once more.” Stevens creates a fabulist soundscape that is a fitting soundtrack for the fictional misadventures of the main character, something as philosophical and kaleidoscopic as an episode of The Midnight Gospel.

Read Luna’s conversation with Stevens about the identity of Peel Dream Magazine and the journey to Pad below.

LUNA: Where did the concept for the album come from?

STEVENS: I started writing those songs at the beginning of the pandemic. I think the concept of it being a “concept album” came later. I really love Beatles-y, twisty little fun things like that. I was thinking it encapsulated this feeling I had that the world had ended, that my band had ended and my life had changed. It was a way of making a fictional representation of what actually was happening in my life, like the reason I’m not playing shows or touring or practicing is not because of COVID — it’s because I was kicked out of my band. There’s this twisted fantasy, it’s completely self-effacing and apocalyptic that something that’s so important to me would go wrong.

LUNA: The song starts with “Not in the Band” and ends with “Back in the Band.” There’s a clear start-to-finish, but what’s happening in between on the journey you were writing about?

STEVENS: It’s not perfectly well-thought-out because it’s first and foremost just a record, but it does have an arc. I made it as if it’s like an allegory of the Odyssey. In the Odyssey, Odysseus can’t find his way home. He’s banished from Ithaca and has to make his way back. It’s kind of like casting the record as an Odyssean fable, where I need the help of the gods to get back into Peel Dream Magazine. In “Message the Manager,” it’s me asking the Peel Dream Magazine manager — who doesn’t exist — if they will put me in touch with the band. The song “Pad” is just about being alone at home. Not long after, I’m joining cults and pleading with the band… It’s nebulous. You’re supposed to kind of apply your own interpretation to it as you listen to it.

LUNA: There’s a song on Pad called “Self Actualization Center” that I think is a standout track on the album. Can you tell me more about that song?

STEVENS: There’s this place [in Los Angeles], it’s almost identical to the [song] name. I think it’s like the Self Fulfillment Realization Center, and I made the song the “Self Actualization Center.” I wanted to pretend that I was a priest there or something, and then it got roped into the story of Pad. In the story, I’m in this wandering state as someone that has been banished from the band. I keep trying things, and one of the things I try to do to find fulfillment is attend a sermon at the Self Actualization Center. It turns out that it is a cult and that it’s gonna steal me and be the end of me, so I eventually escape from the cult.

LUNA: At the end of the day, Peel Dream Magazine is spearheaded by you. This concept of you getting kicked out of something that’s essentially your brainchild, was that intentional?

STEVENS: Peel Dream Magazine is just me, actually. It’s had varying forms when I was in New York for a long time. It was pretty much a proper band, even though I was the songwriter or band leader or whatever, but I always like to keep it opaque. Is it a band or is it a solo project? I wanted to play around shrouding it in further mystery — what is the pronoun of Peel Dream Magazine? Is it a “we” or is it an “I”? I wanted to make it further ambiguous, like Peel Dream Magazine is a thing that exists without me. If I’m not in Peel Dream Magazine, it still exists.

LUNA: It’s 2022 now and you wrote the songs for Pad back in 2020. Do these songs still resonate with you?

STEVENS: It does. Pad is weirdly the only record I’ve ever made that I don’t dislike. I kind of like all of my music, obviously, but there’s that classic thing where no one wants to listen to things that they’ve made, you know? I feel a point of pride for Pad in a way that maybe I don’t for the other stuff I’ve made. For a long time, I had been trying to do this cleaner thing that was based more on baroque-pop influences and that cleaner, gentle world that I was into in addition to all the shoegaze-y stuff.

There was a cognitive dissonance for a long time going through the Agitprop Alterna album cycle. All of that happened while I was in Pad-land in my mind. That was the weird part. I’m not sick of Pad-world because I’m only getting to do it now for the first time. It feels very fresh to me. The past two years, we’ve been presenting as this heavier band, which we were, leading up to that change that happened to my writing.

LUNA: What brought you to that point of Pad, sonically, from Agitprop Alterna?

STEVENS: In album cycles, you’re always hearing somebody from where they were in the past. You’re never really hearing someone right where they’re at. In the moment, I’m working on stuff right now that is not in Pad-world. I’m a life-long Beach Boys fanatic — they’ve always been my North Star as far as my songwriting is concerned. That didn’t really come through in the music that I was working on prior to 2020. It’s obviously very different… I like to put on different hats and live in different worlds. I love My Bloody Valentine and Stereolab and Rocketship… to me, those are all just great pop bands. I also like a bunch of other great pop bands that don’t have that style to them. There’s so many great worlds of pop music. It’s not that I want to change and completely leave things behind, it’s that I want to weave a trail that is connected. I want people to revel in the difference and see that it’s slightly connected.

LUNA: Do you have a specific agenda in mind when making music for this project, or is it whatever comes to you is what it ends up being?

STEVENS: I just want it to be fresh. I think as far as making interesting art, it has to be this kind of inexplicable je ne sais quoi of what made a person do that? Why? That’s interesting, you know? I have this devil-made-me-do-it impulse sometimes where I’m like, I just want to do something that feels very fresh and I want to put a bunch of things together. It’s funny, I got lambasted by a lot of journalists because Agitprop Alterna was not “fresh,” but I think I just wanted to do something that was fun. It’s fun to change and be different. I also think a lot of guitar rock or indie rock is having a crisis right now… It’s kind of hard to figure out right now, where are things going? Where’s the zeitgeist? What’s actually interesting? What will last in five, 10 years? I just wanted to pivot and see what happens.

LUNA: What makes you say that about indie rock music?

STEVENS: I don’t think there’s any bad music out now. I think that there’s a lot of good music. But, what is the defining sound of the moment? There’s a lot of different worlds out there and there’s a lot of worship and cosplay. I resent the idea that being an “indie band” is a thing, like having an indie rock sound. It’s so reductive. I don’t know where the exciting territory is right now for being a band, you know? That impulse pushed me to be like, maybe I don’t want to be a rock band. Maybe I don’t want to have an indie rock guitar sound. Maybe I don’t want to look like an indie rocker. I just want to be me. I want to make music that harkens back to something before me and maybe ultimately will outlast me in some way.

LUNA: Lastly, you’re opening for Beach Fossils soon, before you embark on your headlining tour. How do you feel?

STEVENS: I feel really good. While I really loved the heavy version of Peel Dream Magazine, I had been doing it for a long time with this fantasy in my mind of, like, what if I was playing the gentler Pad stuff? Now I’m actually doing that. I’m playing with a classical guitar, a keyboard, a harmonica at one point — it’s got a completely different vibe. I feel really inspired by crafting the live sound right now. I feel like I’m doing something that I’m really happy with.

Peel Dream Magazine celebrates their album release with Winter on Saturday, October 22 at the Zebulon before heading on tour. Tickets are available now.

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