Peel Dream Magazine is the Los Angeles-based indie pop project helmed by Joseph Stevens. Their latest album, Rose Main Reading Room, will be out September 4 on Topshelf Records.
Jack Tatum is the Virginia-based singer-songwriter who records as Wild Nothing; Joseph Stevens is the LA-based singer-songwriter who fronts Peel Dream Magazine. Recently, the two caught up over the phone about their songwriting processes, live show development, and more. Peel Dream Magazine’s latest album, Rose Main Reading Room, will be out September 4 on Topshelf Records.
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music
Jack Tatum: So, should we start by acknowledging our long conversation the other day that neither of us were able to record?
Joseph Stevens: Yeah, that was so devastating. [Laughs.]
Jack: It’s gonna be funny trying to recreate this conversation that was already had, in a way that doesn’t feel like we’re just regurgitating the same responses.
Joseph: Well, I kind of reworked my questions a bit, so hopefully it’s a little fresh.
Jack: Did you want to start, or should I start?
Joseph: I can start. I want to know what your process of getting ready for a live set or a tour is like. Do you rehearse with the band while you’re working on the album, or is it something that you create exclusively after the recordings are done? Do you feel like you’ve learned about what works and what doesn’t?
Jack: Yeah, definitely. I mean, it’s interesting, because I realized after our conversation the other day that we didn’t even really talk about how our music translates in a live setting. I think it probably speaks to us both being the kind of people that get excited first and foremost about writing and and being in the studio and thinking about music on a conceptual level. For me — I don’t want to say it’s complicated, because I don’t have any animosity towards live music, but it’s sort of been a lesser force in my life. I certainly went to a lot more shows when I was younger, and of course, I had a lot of those cathartic experiences of being a teenager and seeing bands that I liked for the first time — having that magic of not really knowing the ins and outs of how it works. I think something just happens naturally when you start playing music out and you start touring a lot, where you lose a little bit of that. I kind of stopped going out to shows as often as I got older.
But to to answer your question, I feel like I’ve always had a pretty structured sense of the process of getting ready for a show or a tour, because it’s always been the case where I’m retooling material that was largely written and made by myself. So there’s always this process of having to figure out how to best articulate what it is that I want other people to do with my music. Over time, I’ve found what works. So now it’s very much a streamlined thing: I have the set list that I know I want to do, and then I get the band together, and usually we’ll spend a week before any tour that we do. I think because of that, there’s always been a sense of trying to stay true to the record, almost out of necessity, because that is kind of the only anchor point for the music. We’re not like five people getting in a room and jamming, the way that some bands are.
Joseph: I have a very similar experience. For me, the song in and of itself, even before it exists recorded or live, is the most interesting thing. The recorded version is just kind of like, Well, I needed to come up with a recording of it because otherwise it wouldn’t exist. And the live version is like, OK, well, now I need to play it live because that’s part of this whole thing. They’re all so different. It’s always amazing in my head, and then when I record it, I’m kind of like, Ah, that sucks now, it’s real. Live, it can go any way: It can either reinvigorate the way we do it, or sometimes it just doesn’t feel good at all and that’s weird. It’s like different levels of being for the song. I like live music and I like performing, but in my brain, the thing that I’m most passionate about is writing songs.
Jack: Yeah, the composition part of it.
Joseph: I almost view touring as promotion — it’s like album promotion to help spread the songs that I love so much, in and of themselves. As opposed to, like, craving the viscerality of live performance. I’m not like that.
Jack: No, I agree. I think for the most part, I view it in similar terms. Like you, I definitely have had this wide range of outcomes with playing my music live, where sometimes there’ll be something that you think is going to work really well, and then you find that it doesn’t quite resonate in the way that you expected. Or vice versa, where you’re sometimes surprised by what works better live than on the record. I so often have a lot of anxiety about the process of getting ready for a tour, like, How is it all going to work? Is it going to sound how I want it to sound? I have a lot of problems with perfectionism in that sense. But then I feel like the thing that I always find once I’m out there and doing it is that I sometimes forget about just that human connection level of it. I get so in my own head that I sometimes forget that, Oh, no, this can just be a fun thing, and this can just be an emotionally resonant experience for someone who has had years of being familiar with my music. It’s like the classic thing of me playing this song that I’ve heard a thousand times, and the meaning of it has sort of worn away for me, but that’s not the case for other people. So it’s like this constant reminder.
We had talked a little bit about music that we listened to as teenagers. I had initially brought it up just because after my first listen to your new record, I found myself thinking about a lot of these bands that I had been listening to back when I was a teenager in the early, mid-2000s — like when Sufjan Stevens was first coming out, Stereolab, Magnetic Fields, Belle and Sebastian. Some of these bands have really stood the test of time, because they just made timeless music. Is that something that you’re ever conscious of when you’re writing something? Are you only thinking about, Do I enjoy this right now? Or are you thinking about, How am I going to feel about this in two years, in five years? Because I do that, and I don’t know if that’s a normal thing or if it’s just neurosis. [Laughs.]
Joseph: I don’t really think about so many outside considerations like that when I’m writing music. I think tangentially, I’m hoping I will like it. I mean, I like it a lot in the moment when I write it. It’s like this effusive love — it’s beyond liking. I think that it’s the most amazing thing that anybody’s ever made. And then it wears off, because it becomes a real thing and it becomes imbued with all of my faults, or whatever. But in the moment, it’s like a really pure affinity for this thing that I have in my head that I want to get out. I always think that if it’s that exciting to me in the moment, there will always be something I can revisit in the future to like about it. I usually do this thing where, after I make something, I kind of hate it, and I might swing in an extreme aesthetic different direction, because I feel like I need to reset things creatively. But I always end up coming back after an amount of time has elapsed to really appreciate something I’ve made.
I think that certain things age better than others. I think that songs that are less aesthetic driven, but more songwriting driven, is stuff that ages the best. Because the trends or the specific angle of what something sounds like — that stuff goes away. But no matter what, there’s always going to be this simple bare bones thing to a song that’s like, Is it good or is it not good? For me personally, I really love when a song has an objectively airtight melody and chord progression. I think that I tend to try and always make sure that stuff is interesting to me on my records, because down the line, that’s something I’ll appreciate later on, and hopefully something other people appreciate, too.
Jack: Yeah. I like your point about that creative rush of working on something. It almost does feel like if you don’t have that overwhelming sense of, Oh, this is one of the best things I’ve done, then you almost want to shelve it. I think a lot of people feel that way, and I almost feel like if you don’t feel that way, then I don’t really know how someone finishes something. It can be such a big driver in being able to get to the finish line with writing songs, because it’s not easy. I think especially too, the more that you’ve written, it’s grown a little bit harder to get to the finish line. I could start a million songs and have no problem with that, but to actually finish something is a whole different scenario.
Joseph: That’s a whole other thing, yeah. I think finishing stuff is really hard. I love to write music, and similarly I can kind of churn out a lot of stuff, but once you pass the 50% line, that’s where the real craft comes in. I’ve put a lot of time and energy into getting better at that. I know when a record is coming and how to approach it all as a record, and make sure that the good stuff gets finished and the bad stuff gets set aside; that the mixing feels cohesive, that I stick to a deadline. There’s all these concerns and real life things that you need to do, and it’s kind of uninteresting. It’s not the sexiest part of the songwriting. The sexy part is the beginning when you just have this chord progression and you hear this thing and you can’t stop thinking about it, and you’re recording voice memos. That’s so beautiful.
But then the latter part can be like drudgery. Or not drudgery, but craft. That’s where you really gotta be good at it to get it to the finish line. And I’m not saying I’m amazing at it — I’m just saying I’ve put a lot of effort into translating these ideas I have into song-songs. And sometimes you don’t even want to put it into a song form. It’s kind of weird to make an album. I think very few people are like, Oh, I love this chord progression, I want to make a three-and-a-half minute song now. Usually more for me, it’s like, I just love this section, I love this melody, what can I do now? The song thing is almost like a burden. Sometimes it’s like you have to take the magic out of it a little bit.
Jack: Yeah, I agree. I’m curious how you feel about… I’m trying to think of how to phrase it, but sort of this idea of the “magic amateur” — like the creative gift that you can only really exploit when you’re just starting something, versus having years and years and years of experience. Because I tend to swing back and forth on it. When I recently listened to my older music, there’s so many choices that I wouldn’t make now, but there’s also a lot of things that I like about it that I just can’t do any more. I just know too much. I think one of the most tangible aspects of that is the recording quality, or the sort of textural way that the music sounds. Less so than putting songs together. But I think I was a lot more blasé about songwriting back then, or at least I never overthought anything and pretty much all of the songs on my first record were started and completed within the span of a day. I can’t remember the last time that I started a song and finished it in a day. Just because my brain won’t really allow me — I feel like there’s too many question marks about where it could go and how to successfully put it together. I’m curious how you feel about the ways in which your approach to songwriting has changed from when you were just starting out, to where you are now.
Joseph: Yeah. Sometimes I do write a song in one day, and that can be really good because you just tap into something. Other times, I work on something for excruciatingly long. They’re both good and bad in different ways. I feel like I trust my intuition, and I don’t trust it. It’s almost like that movie Groundhog Day, where I know all of the emotional steps that I’m going to go through when I’m working on something, and I’ve built little barriers to myself like, This could be good enough, but I’m going to flag this chord progression, because usually when I make something like this I end up hating it later. I really try and make my process different every time, because the process feels inventive that way. Sometimes I’ll demo out a whole record, like really detailed, and then record it. Other times, it is really slapdash. I think everything can be good and bad in different ways.
I think that the narrative about an amateur being the best or the most tapped in is not really true. I think that a typical rock & roll career is that you get your start when you’re young, and I think a lot young people just tend to have lots of great ideas and emotions. They might also not know a whole lot about what they’re doing, so that kind of illusion — “they don’t know what they’re doing, but they made this amazing thing” — it could have just been things that they were going through that were incredible, and they were able to tap in. And, yeah, the amateur-ness kind of fed a fearlessness and a creative zeal or whatever, but you have tons of people that you take away that hype and they suck. Like, there’s nothing there. So it can go both ways. Like there’s people who are really rigid, and sometimes they make Spirit of Eden by Talk Talk — it’s a masterpiece, and it took forever. That couldn’t have been made in one day.
Jack: Yeah, for sure. I think the reality is always somewhere in the middle. I feel like what you appreciate in songwriting changes so much, too, as you get older and, and there’s nothing more exciting to me as I’ve gotten older than discovering late career records that people have that are super good. Because it just feels like a win for older people that have like been in it. [Laughs.] Like, Damn you still did it.
Joseph: You know who a favorite in that arena is — do you know any of Colin Blunstone’s solo stuff?
Jack: I’m familiar, kind of more on just a song by song—
Joseph: His solo records are, like, better than The Zombies.
Jack: I should dig more into it. I’m looking now and there’s a handful of ‘70s records I don’t think I’ve checked out at all.
Joseph: You’ll get a lot of mileage out of those, I think. When we first talked, this thing came up about how you like to periodically use synth sounds that can be categorized as “taboo.” The ‘80s stuff — it’s kind of interesting, because it’s this futuristic thing from the past that feels simultaneously really relevant to nowadays, but also really out of date because they can sound corny. So I wanted to ask you: is there anything right now musically or aesthetically that similarly catches your ear? Where’s your head at currently?
Jack: I mean, that’s a bit of a hard question for me because, truthfully, I don’t keep up with new music quite as much as I did when I was younger. But there’s an artist — I think she’s Danish — ML Buch. I feel like she is doing a similar service in using unorthodox or maybe even taboo sounds in a way that I find to be really interesting. It sort of straddles this line between what I would consider pop music and then sort of more experimental electronic, ambient-leaning stuff. Some of the sounds are really unusual, but it still feels very of the moment in a way that I don’t necessarily always like. In the pop world, I love Charli XCX. There’s a French artist, Oklou, that I feel like is doing some interesting things. But, yeah, it’s hard for me; I tend to kind of be fed and led towards older music, just because of my listening habits.
Joseph: But older music can also be where things are headed, because things are coming back in cycles. I’ve been going further in my own writing in the kind of nostalgic realm of Y2K indie rock, ‘90s stuff. There’s something about that that has a currency to me right now. It’s exciting, and I think it is exciting to other people as well. We’re just reaching a time in history when that kind of stuff is like vintage, actually, now.
Jack: I feel that in your music. It’s weird to finally be at an age where you’re seeing the things that were really important to you at pivotal points in your adolescence coming back in to style in certain ways.
Joseph: Right.
Jack: I do feel like we found this real kindred connection in the idea of skewed pop music, or in this quest of taking traditional pop structures and finding little ways to bend them here or there so that it’s not this super straightforward thing, but it’s also familiar in all the right ways. I feel like that’s something that I really sense in your music, and that I feel like is something that I’m always trying to push for. I think we had talked a little bit about it, your process of trying to find that balance…
Joseph: Yeah, I remember talking about this. I think I mentioned that I view songwriting as a folk art, and that folk art is a really cool medium because unlike sort of the more highbrow mediums, your audience is just everybody, regardless of their taste or interests or music ability. You’re just talking to human beings and making stuff for them to hear. The structure is so universally beloved and understood — you know, the three-minute pop song. It’s like the feature film in American culture, where it’s a thing that everybody knows and engages with, but that you as a director —or in context of music, as a songwriter — have this really cool opportunity because you can basically Trojan horse interesting or subversive or complicated ideas into this thing that’s pretty universally simple and easy to understand. I always hate when art is high concept and complicated and there’s barriers. Songwriting is not like that.
Jack: Yeah. And we’re certainly not alone in that. But I do think that there are all sorts of people, and there are people that might not even really be game for going as in depth as someone like you or I would. And then there’s the people that kind of reject anything that isn’t sort of intentionally obtuse. But to me, where the magic has always existed in any really art form, is that middle ground.
Joseph: Yeah, totally. In response to your question of what do I care more about, how pleasing it is or how interesting or subversive the concept is? I think generally speaking, I want things to be interesting and just good musically, and I think by extension, poppiness and relatability and just enjoyment is a big part of my brain as a songwriter. The more high concept stuff that I want to Trojan Horse into the songs — that’s like the dessert. That’s the thing that I get to do once I’ve created them. On its own, I just want it to be good and poppy.
