Pad Breakdown With Peel Dream Magazine

Artwork by Liz Moser

Peel Dream Magazine’s Joseph Stevens joins us to lay out the stories behind each track on his latest record Pad that diverges from his shoegazey beginnings toward a rosier dopamine-boosting nature.

“Not in the Band”

The album opens as if it's frozen in a moment. The vibraphone is like a clock ticking idly, but in suspense. The story of the album opens with me inexplicably exiled from Peel Dream Magazine, and I wanted that to feel both tragic and cozy at the same time, as if I've found a way to get on with my new life and make a new home (my Pad). I would say I wrote this about halfway through the process of making the album, and I was heavily exploring mid century instrumentation. When I was recording this, I heard my partner Kristina playing with our dog in the other room, and it just encapsulated this joyous, domestic moment - I ran outside to join them and secretly recorded them playing, so that's what you hear tucked away at the end of the track.

“Pad”

The first song-song of the record, I recorded this really early on in the process. It was at the outset of the pandemic, and I was literally singing about being confined to my apartment. It was a huge departure aesthetically for me, and channeled this "Smiley Smile" era Beach Boys feel that I'm hugely inspired by. It didn't feel like a Peel Dream Magazine song, partly because my apartment only allowed for a basic recording like that with the organ as the primary instrument. The shaker sound is actually a plastic container of cous cous that I was using for this mellow shaker sound. I would record something with it during the day, make some cous cous for dinner, and then when I resumed recording that night, it would have a slightly different tambour from having less inside. I tried a few times to clean this recording up with better vocal takes, etc. but I eventually decided that it sounded best the way it was, which I did in one take. I developed this philosophy during that time that I wanted everyone to hear my sloppy first takes and not overly edit the recordings. I was also messing around with a bunch of chimes on this one.

“Pictionary”

I ended up recording this several times over. I'm blown away by the High Llamas song "The Old Spring Town," and I was particularly inspired by the way the drum beat has the snare on every quarter note. It felt driving but genteel at the same time and I wanted the entire record to have a genteel, baroque energy. I ended up borrowing that idea for this song and “Self Actualization Center.” I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how this record could have rock songs, and this represents the pinnacle of driving energy on the album, just with acoustic guitars. The melody is essentially a redux of "I'm Only Sleeping" by the Beatles, with some clever chord changes happening behind it that give it this puzzle-ish feel. The song is very ambiguously about "play", and in it, a set of characters have a tantric, debaucherous experience while playing a game of Pictionary.

“Wanting and Waiting”

This song also went through a bunch of different iterations. I ended up giving the song that shuffling beat and adding in clavichord with the auto wah. I'm singing a lot more clearly/up front than I have on past records here, so this one stands out in that way. In the story of the record, I'm drawing an analogy between Odysseus, who like me has been banished from his true home, and myself (banished from my band). The album is an allegory about the personal odyssey we're all on to find our home. I'm trapped on the island of Calypso, begging my captor to release me ("Seven long years while you sing"). I eventually plead with Athena to intervene and free me, which she does.

“Self Actualization Center”

On the inner sleeve of the record is the story of Pad written out as a fable. In that story, I explain that my personal journey in exile leads me to a mysterious church that promises to relieve me of my woes. That church is the Self Actualization Center, styled after the real-life "Self Realization Fellowship" in Los Angeles, this ultra "woo", Buddhist-adjacent institution. I'd heard a lot about it and began to play with the idea that it was essentially a cult, and like the island of the Lotus Eaters in the Odyssey, that it would try to lure me into it's orbit only to entrap me forever. My friend Samira of Winter sings on this one.

“Walk Around the Block”

In my mining of mid century influences, I wanted to touch on the library music of folks like Basil Kirchin and Sven Libaek. This goes after that 70s style noir film score vibe. This is also a krauty one by comparison with the others. The feverish tone and title of the song suggest that I furiously need to walk and think, as I sometimes do. It's very much a "something's on my mind" track.

“Hamlet”

This was a really early song. It leans into the country/psychedelia intersection of the album. In this song I'm talking through a window to the birds outside my Pad. Unlike me, they are not confined to a structure, but able to fly freely anywhere they choose. That feeling of entrapment and isolation, which in a literal sense was drawing on the quarantine, is a universal concept that I wanted to touch on with the record. "Peering outside my hamlet, wanting to feel that way. Practice a song, I hammer it, practicing for that day." I'm literally working on Pad in the song, preparing for the day I will be free and share the album with the outside world. There's a lot of self-aware stuff like that on the album, as I wanted to blur the fourth wall as much as I could. The second section of this song has this magical vibe to it. There's some hope in there.

“Penelope's Suitors”

This is a reprisal of the opening track, although you don't know it until the end. This one oscillates between this surreal, care-free feeling and this sinister, churning darkness. That is kind of the central tug of war on the album. In the Odyssean allegory, I'm referencing the suitors who are lining up to replace him and marry his wife Penelope. In my version of the story, Peel Dream Magazine is holding auditions in the practice space, and there's hordes of greedy applicants hoping to replace me and making a mess of the space.

“Hiding Out”

I wrote this about needing space and retreating to a secret happy place by yourself. During the early days of the pandemic, I would stroll endlessly through the industrial part of northern Brooklyn and into Queens, up and down every weird little side street I could find. I would hit the wastewater treatment plant in Greenpoint, and then Calvary Cemetery, and head over to Long Island City and the Queensboro Bridge. I felt a bit like I had the city to myself because things were so shut down. The verses have a tense minimalism to them, and the choruses open up into this magical world with more color and instruments, so there's this musical analogy happening.

“Jennifer Hindsight”

This song is basically me being in awe of truth as it reveals itself in real time, or especially, after the fact. Truth is this unwavering, mesmerising babe who turns your life upside down and keeps you grounded at the same time. "Jennifer Hindsight, you shattered my plans. You're changing my life with the wave of your hand". Jennifer Hindsight obviously represents hindsight, and the year 2020 as well. It was a mesmerizing dose of reality for where we have arrived as humanity - completely fucked but also incredibly resilient. In the song I talk about her and other allegorical characters that help keep a town functioning (the original title for the song was "Our Town"). There's mail carriers, librarians, heathens, and even a mayor - they too all play a role in shaping our lives. It's a little bit like a metaphysical civics lesson. The lyrics also continue to opine on my pandemic walks, as if the town is somehow New York City. "From Wastewater to Calvary, the streets are so plain."

“Reiki”

This is one of my more minimalist leaning instrumental tracks. The original version didn't have any marimba, instead relying more on patches from my DX7 which I still used a lot in the final mix. I actually sold that DX7 to one of the members of The Strokes here in LA via Craigslist. I had been advertising it and they just randomly showed up. I really wanted to expand the aesthetic palette of PDM, and I was inspired by Japanese composers like Haruomi Hosono and Susumu Yokota, as well as obviously Steve Reich. My friend Marta Tiesenga recorded saxophone for this one.

“La Sol”

Do Re Mi La Sol is a melody written out in Solfege, but I also like that La Sol sounds like bastardized Spanish for "The Sun" or even "L.A. Sun". I only sing the melody in its correct form once in the song - the first time I recite that lyric it's actually just to "Do" the entire time. I like the idea of "saying" a melody without actually singing it, as an allegory for not really having your heart in something. This song is about a character who has to leave his family home in the countryside because it feels lifeless to him. It's almost as if the lyrics are a letter that one of his siblings has received from him on the road, "Give my love to Alice, don't ever put her down. I've gone and run to Dallas, a city life abound". This is a really fun wacky one full of banjo and synthesizers. It's not literally about me in the Pad storyline, but it fits neatly into the overall theme.

“Message the Manager”

This one has more of an orchestral, baroque pop whimsy to it, channeling a bit of what I love on Sgt. Peppers. Here, I'm pleading with the manager of Peel Dream Magazine to put me in touch with the band so that we can reconcile our differences. The structure of this song is more like classical music in that it's not a verse/chorus/bridge type of progression. I wanted each section to simply flow into the next, growing and shrinking with the emotional tenor of the music. I've grown completely exhausted by the music industry here, and in a moment of defeatism, I tell myself "Never be livid, Joe".

“Roll in the Hay”

This is a surreal instrumental piece that follows this love-making arc. It starts out with this sweet melody - one that reprises part of the Pictionary melody, and then enters this more brisk, chugging section where two are going at it. There is then this intense build/hold, and finally . . . an eruption. This is not part of the album story but in a way it's about consummation and being brought together.

“Back in the Band”

The finale to the record, I've finally rejoined Peel Dream Magazine. This song is sung from the perspective of one of my bandmates who is speaking to me. "It really wasn't cool when you bailed on our show, or when you didn't pay your tab. But nothing can excuse my petty rant, or when I went and hit you back". On the one hand, this is a celebratory song about friendship and resilience, but on the other hand it's got a freakish, sardonic quality to it, almost as if my bandmate is speaking through gritted teeth. It's supposed to suggest that in any friendship/relationship/family/band there is this simultaneous push and pull that keeps people together and apart at the same time. There's obvious resentment here, but at the end of the day, all we have is each other, and there's a lot of love there as well.