The indie rock outtakes EP is an underappreciated and endangered art form. For a prolific auteur bent on creating a cultlike fanbase, it’s essential to the sort of world-building that breeds obsession. What would the Guided by Voices discography be without its slight montages of moth-eaten ephemera; Belle and Sebastian without their early hot streak of loosies? While the streaming era has made it easy to tack bonus tracks onto a “deluxe” release or pad a record with a skippable song that might not fit into its intended vision, Joseph Stevens’ lounge-pop project Peel Dream Magazine recognizes the importance of the curated yet fleeting drop. The band has followed each of its four albums with a corresponding collection of leftovers, providing glimpses of Stevens’ lush, Stereolab-indebted songwriting in its weirdest, rawest form. Taurus comes on the heels of 2024’s Rose Main Reading Room, Peel Dream’s most explicit embrace of minimalist composition, showing the breadth of styles Stevens can extract from his arsenal of choral arrangements and goopy Moog patches.
Peel Dream records often present like a thrifted fit check. Stevens isn’t shy about making his influences clear, and his best compositions pair sonic references that thread between eras and genres, tracing decades of re-appropriation. On Pad, a track like “Hiding Out” could deploy a banjo riff that reveals connective tissue between the Beach Boys’ “Cabinessence” and Sufjan’s Illinois while shrinking each touchstone’s thematic scope to a quiet, navel-gazing walk. Beneath the layers of pastiche in Peel Dream’s work is an intense, searching introspection. When he name-drops locations along the way, it’s a street view, not a drone shot.
The outtakes on Taurus don’t collage as well as the material that made it on Rose Main Reading Room, each one gesturing more clearly to a single source. Opener “Venus in Nadir” is a cute, whispery nod to Yo La Tengo; “Taurus” displays some of Stevens’ most explicit Sufjan worship yet; and as usual, there’s plenty of Stereolab’s motorik hypnosis on “Seek and Destroy.” But the simpler makeup of this songwriting also works to its advantage. Taurus’ stabs at straightforward pop are some of Peel Dream’s catchiest songs yet. “Venus in Nadir” follows a tight verse-jam-verse structure that emphasizes the intricacy of Stevens’ arranging. With each listen, I anticipate the stretches when his voice drops out to make room for the cute tilt-a-whirl synth melody, which is backed by more harmonic elements every time it appears. In a less skilled composer’s hands, the song would be cloyingly twee, but Stevens has the skill to go all in on a charm offensive while remaining tasteful.
The unfinished demo “Take It” is further proof that Stevens’ songcraft shines in its most understated forms. Scattering over gentle electric keys and fingerpicked guitar, it’s an impressionist take on Bacharach that stands alone as a semi-instrumental opus, warm and inviting. This ambient quality can make Taurus feel like an aural lava lamp or a curvy piece of mid-century modern accent furniture. But at its best, it’s more evidence that Peel Dream Magazine can make their scraps as enticing as the main course.
