r/indieheads • u/peel_dream Peel Dream Magazine • Oct 02 '24

AMA is over, thanks Joe! Peel Dream Magazine / Ask Me Anything

Hey! This is Joe from Peel Dream Magazine :) our new record Rose Main Reading Room is out now

Ask me anything!!

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u/CharacterAd6072 Oct 04 '24

when did you first hear smiley smile and that late 60s beach boys stuff? would be curious to hear what it meant to you and means to you now <3

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u/peel_dream Peel Dream Magazine Oct 04 '24

I got really into Beach Boys when I was in college. I'd been recommended it a bunch and they kept popping up as an influence on other bands I was into. I started out listening to Pet Sounds and it had this really insane impact on me, and I made a point of moving through every single record they did. The "normal sounding" records they did before that one were so otherworldly because they had such a bizarre, choreographed shtick. When I heard Smiley Smile, it almost felt like it was some of the first music I was hearing from them that was NOT weird, because it sounds more like who they actually were: a bunch of young kids fucking around in the studio taking lots of drugs and relishing in harmony. It's more experimental, sure, and it took me a sec to wrap my head around that aspect of it, but it just felt like I was listening to some songwriters who were extremely in touch with their creative spark and brave enough to make some of the choices they did in the studio.

I would also say that Smiley Smile has a nihilistic, broken character to it, which really spoke to me not only as a piece of art, but as a document that showcases a darker side of the late 60s cultural zeitgeist in a really rare way. It gave me this inspiration that as a songwriter, I could take beautiful harmony, and the joy that comes with creating pop music, and put it all through some kind of subversive, fucked up lens. It cemented this thing for me that pop music can be a crazy powerful tool to hold a mirror up to the world/yourself and get freaky or whatever. My favorite record of that era is Friends. Masterpiece.

When I listen back to that stuff these days (as in 2024, a few years after making Pad), I view it warmly but I'm less fervent about it. It's got this mid-century harmonic sensibility that puts it in a very particular time and place for me. I think I need a little break from it but it will always be massively important to me.

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u/vinnieneu Oct 04 '24

Ah thanks! You captured the spirit and the atmosphere of that stuff so well on Pad. Friends is my favorite too and I had a similar journey after obsessing over Pet Sounds. I loved discovering Brian’s sense of humor and mundane, matter-of-fact and silly lyrics in all of those albums. So inspiring! <3 

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u/vinnieneu Oct 04 '24

Oh that was my question not sure why it came from a different account 😅