Peel Dream Magazine - Pad (Yellow Vinyl)

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!.

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

Track listing:

1. Not In The Band

2. Pad

3. Pictionary

4. Wanting And Waiting

5. Self-Actualization Center

6. Walk Around The Block

7. Hamlet

8. Penelope’s Suitors

9. Hiding Out

10. Jennifer Hindsight

11. Reiki

12. La Sol

13. Message The Manager

14. Roll In The Hay

15. Back In The Band