Embarrassed Landscape

Following the release of his fifth album, 2017s No Handshake Blues, Irma Vep -- the outsider rock project of Welsh musician Edwin Stevens -- moved its base from Manchester, England, where Stevens had been a longtime member of the thriving D.I.Y. scene. Arriving three years later, Embarrassed Landscape is his first to be recorded in his adopted home of Glasgow, although it includes contributions from several familiar names. Most notable among them are drummer Andrew Cheetham and bass player Ruari Maclean, the latter of whom also co-recorded the album. Another prior collaborator, Manchester art-rock figure Kiran Leonard, lent guitar to Embarrassed Landscapes rambling, high-energy opening track, a ten-minute, trippy psych-rock jam that doesnt introduce its murky, filtered vocals until past the five-minute mark. Titled King Kong, it essentially signals that anything goes, and the track list proceeds to reveal noisy punk rock (Not Even), lo-fi alt-country (Tears Are the Sweetest Sauce), riff-heavy psych-rock (The Feeling Is Gone), and even the low-key, George Harrison-like sweet strains of Standards. The kitchen-sink presentation is held together by scrappy hooks, the albums jagged, live recording design, and intentionality as well as the fact that the songs are mostly quite good and sometimes great. The latter group includes highlight I Do What I Want, a catchy, psychedelic/garage tune that captures the spirit of the approach. As if the underscore that theme, Embarrassed Landscape closes with a drowsy, druggy, over-seven-minute-long country-tinged ballad called Canary (Ill get a job today/But Im sleeping in anyway), a track that bookends the album in another jam. ~ Marcy Donelson