With his first two albums as
Peel Dream Magazine
,
Joseph Stevens
perfectly re-created the propulsive excitement and sophisticated dream states of early
Stereolab
, by himself on the 2018 home-recorded debut
Modern Meta Physic
and with a full band on 2020's
Agitprop Alterna
. At times,
's loving homage to
's indie pop perfection got a little too on-the-nose, offering a detailed replica without much in the way of new personal or emotional angles to keep it from sounding like mere imitation. Third album
Pad
changes course drastically, and in doing so, corrects some of things that felt overly derivative on past records. Though
Stevens
' light and optimistic melodic character is still intact, he drops the motorik drums and straight-ahead guitar blasts in favor of playful chamber pop arrangements informed by
Van Dyke Parks
, late-'60s
Beach Boys
, and
Harry Nilsson
while flirting with touches of breezy Tropicalia and bossa nova along the way. The album begins with a soft vibraphone figure that takes a left turn into gentle flute arrangements, nylon string guitars, and subtle atmospheric synth sounds all slowly coming into focus. This instrumentation is a massive and overt departure from the bright indie rock that made up the first two
albums, and
stays in this chipper mode for its entirety. More upbeat tunes like "Pictionary" or "Hiding Out" still have remnants of
influence, but the 1970s rhythm box drum machines and watery electronics are more
Dots and Loops
than the
Peng!
-modeled sounds of earlier
PDM
material. Throughout the album,
injects mild psychedelia into his songs, with strange ambience moving around in the background behind the eerie brass parts of the fuzzy instrumental "Walk Around the Block" or strings melting into wobbly synthesizer parts on "Jennifer Hindsight." The bumbling banjo and smiling key changes of "Roll in the Hay" are taken right out of
Smile
-era
, and in moments like this,
find the nexus of happy-go-lucky songwriting and
Brian Wilson
worship explored by late-'90s acts like
the High Llamas
or
Plush
.
is a welcome change for a band who were becoming a little too stuck in their admiration for their biggest influences, and even with its clear reference points, the refreshing directional shift helps bring listeners closer to
' individualized musical personality. ~ Fred Thomas