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Sep 01, 2022 By Mark Redfern

Peel Dream Magazine (aka Joseph Stevens) is releasing his third album, Pad, on October 7 via Slumberland/Tough Love. Now he has shared its second single, “Pictionary,” via a video for it. Stevens co-directed the video with Clayton McCracken. Watch it below.

Stevens had this to say in a press release: “I co-directed this video with my talented friend Clayton McCracken, a prominent video artist in LA specializing in live visuals. We filmed the entire thing in his living room, although it feels more like an elaborate stage when you watch it. The song is a baroque ode to ‘play’ in all forms. In it, a set of characters experience a mysterious, orgiastic cataclysm while playing a game of Pictionary. The rest is open to interpretation. According to the story of the album, I’ve been exiled from Peel Dream Magazine. Scenes alternate between me playing the board game, and laboring over a composition. I’m weaving my own reality, and perhaps the very song itself, in the style of this isolated “tortured artist”. I wanted to channel Herman Melville’s Pierre, which tells this gothic 19th century story of an author who drives himself mad while working on his magnum opus - the true story of his own life. I love that kind of stuff. It’s also supposed to be a play on the baroque pop element of the new record, which features harpsichord and chamber strings. I ended up wearing a bunch of Clayton’s clothes that felt very Laurel Canyon 60s LA to me. Oh and look for the missing chunk of the feather pen - it went up in flames from one of the candles during the first take we filmed.”

Previously Peel Dream Magazine shared a video for the album’s title track, “Pad.” His last album was 2020’s Agitprop Alterna.

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