Name: Pad
Brand: Peel Dream Magazine

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

TLV157LP

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Colour

Yellow

Colour details

Discogs ID

Format multiplier

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music GB

Limited edition

Release date

2022-10-07

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier GB

Cargo

Tax rate GB

Standard:20

UPC / Barcode

5055869549400

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Total Cap

1 / Extended format: No / LP / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No / yellow

TLV157CD

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5055869549394

{"blocks": [{"data": {"text": "5055869549394"}, "type": "paragraph"}]}

1 / CD / Extended format: No / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No

Artist

Peel Dream Magazine

Genre GB

Alternative / Modern

Label GB

Tough Love

Peel Dream Magazine is an indie rock band hailing from New York City. Their unique sound combines elements of dream pop, shoegaze, and post-punk, creating a captivating and atmospheric listening experience. Led by the talented Joe Stevens, Peel Dream Magazine has gained recognition for their introspective lyrics and lush instrumentals. With their debut album "Modern Meta Physic" receiving critical acclaim, this band is definitely one to watch in the music scene.

Formed in 2018, Peel Dream Magazine quickly made waves with their distinctive blend of genres. Influenced by iconic bands like My Bloody Valentine and The Velvet Underground, they have crafted a sound that is both nostalgic and forward-thinking. Their music transports listeners to another realm with its ethereal melodies and hypnotic rhythms.

With each release, Peel Dream Magazine continues to push boundaries and explore new sonic territories. Their sophomore album "Agitprop Alterna" showcases their growth as artists while maintaining the signature dreamy aesthetic that fans have come to love. Whether you're a fan of indie rock or simply appreciate innovative music, Peel Dream Magazine's discography is sure to captivate your ears.

Tough Love is a record label based in London, UK. Established in 2005, the label has become a prominent force in the music industry, representing a diverse range of talented artists and releasing groundbreaking music across various genres.
With an unwavering commitment to quality and innovation, Tough Love has earned a reputation for discovering and nurturing emerging talent. The label's extensive catalog showcases an eclectic mix of electronic, house, techno, and alternative sounds that captivate listeners worldwide.
Driven by a passion for music and an entrepreneurial spirit, Tough Love continues to push boundaries and challenge conventions. With their finger on the pulse of contemporary trends and an ear for timeless melodies, they are at the forefront of shaping the future of music.

With his third album as Peel Dream Magazine, Joseph Stevens beckons you toward a fabulist, zig-zag world entirely of his own design. On Pad, he eschews the fuzzy glories of his indie pop past – vibraphone trembles while chamber strings take center stage. The curtains lift to reveal banjo. Chimes. Farfisa. And as he lets out a moan atop the album’s title track, it becomes clear that this is no ordinary performance. A conceptual work about losing oneself when all they have is themself, Pad gestures towards an exciting new future for Stevens’ pop moniker by reimagining its own very existence.

The follow-up to 2020’s breakthrough album Agitprop Alterna, Pad presents a major sonic evolution for the 34 year old songwriter, who moved to Los Angeles amid the cataclysm that same year. Seventies era drum machines and synthesizers remain here, but he’s traded his buzzing offset guitar for a nylon-string, opting for a gentle baroque pop sound steeped in Bossa, folk, and its own eerie mysticism. Alongside mid century touchstones like Burt Bacharach, Stevens draws on the cultishly-beloved tinkerings of late-1960s Beach Boys, offering a surreal melange of vintage organs and found percussion, as well as Harry Nilsson’s 1970 song tapestry The Point!.

And similar to The Point!, Pad is a conceptual work reflecting on isolation and identity. The album tells a bedtime story in which Stevens’ bandmates kick him out of Peel Dream Magazine – banished and now without purpose, he sets out on a journey to rejoin the band. Misadventures ensue, such as when he joins a cult on “Self Actualization Center”, featuring friend and oft collaborator Winter. But this is also music that’s purely pleasurable in its own context, as our protagonist explores the boundaries of easy-listening with discordant textures, and bleeps and bloops that tickle. Songs like “Pictionary” chime delicately with sinister intent, evoking a palette that is outright Mod. Pad also recalls the space age bachelor stylings of Stereolab and The High Llamas, with an occult twist that borrows from Tropicalia legends Os Mutantes.

There’s an unmoored frivolity to Pad, standing in stark contrast to the severe, droning motorik of Steven’s previous albums. Overwhelmed by the political upheaval of the day, he reimagines what Van Dyke Parks once referred to as musical counter-counterculturalism, blurring the line between blithe escapism and pointed subversion. “I felt like there was no other way for me to authentically react to what was happening than to make this record”. The album also draws on library music from the same era to similar effect, conjuring the likes of Basil Kirchin and Pierro Piccioni, as well as Stevens’ newfound arranging skills, honed composing advertisement scores as a day job.

While Pad sounds beautiful, there’s a certain darkness to it as well. Stevens is addressing our general ambivalence toward the future of everything we know, informed partly by his time in New York at the onset of the pandemic. On “Hiding Out”, he laments: Wander past the Vernon Mall, and up to Queensboro Bridge. Made to feel I’m two feet small, but that’s no way to live. Ultimately, Stevens is embracing a first-thought-best-thought approach, leaning into the fantastical elements of his own life story. Pad is as archetypal as it is strange, blurring the very lines that it asks to be defined by. Art imitates life, but life imitates art too – and the results can sometimes be unpredictable.

“Whistle a tune I once sang, what a bore. Memories abound from when we’d go on tour.”