Edwin R Stevens (Irma Vep) shares 'You Can't Win', from new album 'God On All Fours' (10 November, Ankstmusik)
Edwin R Stevens
Shares new single 'You Can't Win'
New album God On All Fours
Due 10th November on Ankstmusik
Following on from recent single 'Only Child', Edwin R Stevens shares 'You Can't Win' – the second track from his forthcoming new album. Entitled God On All Fours, the new record marks the first under his own name having previously released music under his Irma Vep alias. God On All Fours is due out 10th November via Ankstmusik.
Speaking on 'You Can't Win', Stevens says: "You Can’t Win was one of the last songs finished for the record. It’s one of my favourites. It came out of long phone conversations with my friend James, who it’s also dedicated to."
Listen on streaming services:
https://orcd.co/youcantwin
What does it mean “to go straight?” How did Metallica get to Nothing Else Matters after years of brutality? How did David Lynch come to tell his Straight Story? Like these artists, Edwin Stevens, long-time guitar mangler, distorted punk waste merchant and fecally-obsessed author has loped off his gnarly edges and protrusions to reveal something not straight, perhaps, but something approaching pure and recognisable. God On All Fours is Stevens’ “straightest” album to date and by far his bravest and most approachable. Edwin R. Stevens’ “straight story” turns out to be a masterclass in storytelling.
Of course, for seasoned Stevens-followers, glowing pathos and humanity was always beneath everything he does. Often liberally slathered in his own virtuoso, wild guitar style and the deft, substantial contributions of his collaborators, the songs at the heart of his craft always seemed to be great, almost classic if only you could wipe away the fuzz. On God On All Fours, Stevens does that himself. Recorded directly with long term supporting musicians Andrew Cheetham, Dan Bridgwood Hill, Ruari Maclean and Stevie Jones, this set is the premium Edwin Stevens delivery system. Stripped down to the bare songs, delivered relatively directly, Stevens reveals himself to be a master world-builder, employing a novelists’ use of narrative and picture-painting. His songs and lyrics curl around the human heart, prodding the funny bone with a witty couplet here, stabbing a particularly sore point there with a devastating detail. His narratives take unexpected turns, informed by close-to-the-bone observations and colour reminiscent of the likes of David Berman’s Silver Jews or mid-period Bill Callahan, if those lyricists came from North Wales rather than middle America. It’s hard to imagine either of those writing a line like “Could you just this once try and have sex with your wife, love is a stray dog and it’s set on fire by kids, he’s an only child and he needs this.”
God On All Fours, being a stopping point in the long and winding road that is Edwin Stevens’ musical career is, of course, not a completely straight story. There are recognisable themes that hark back to other Stevens’ work, dark threads and events that stick in the throat; the lurid yet heartbreaking album highlight 'Only Child' is a meditation on family and the frailty of its structures. 'Medication Ran Out' paints a brutal 21st Century murder tale against the backdrop of a cartoonish “broken Britain.” 'Stress And Relief' has the feel of a Velvet Underground classic yet opens with the line “ I dream of it and wet the bed: stress and relief,” before veering, Icarus-like, pretty damn close to the sun, if the sun was a bona-fide love song. The song reminds us that many of Stevens’ songs are powered by an internal tension, calamity always threatening around the corner. Here there’s a suggestion of redemption in the simplicity of having someone to share your calamities and anxieties with.
Emerging from behind the shadow of his “singer/songwriter” alias, Irma Vep, Stevens perhaps reveals more of himself as a human being than ever before. If Irma Vep’s overpowering compulsion was for self-analysis bordering on self-flagellation (as hilarious and thrilling as that often was), under his own name his stories seem more well-rounded, more honest. It’s telling on album closer 'Some Things Are Best Left Undone', a cover of his own song as Irma Vep. The same song, a beautiful ballad, is rendered here simply and boldly with piano and voice in contrast to the scratchy guitar version recorded 10 years ago. It might be an intertextual joke given the song title but we can afford Stevens his own private mirth given the killer last line of the song and album: “the horse you rode in on just died and I swear I saw a tear in his eye / You thought that he might try say goodbye but he didn’t and you wonder why.” Whereas the Stevens of 2013 might have covered up the core of his message with self-deprecating tape hiss or guitar brutality, here Stevens is telling his story, straight. His story, it turns out, is not one solely populated by ghouls, distortion and compulsion but one that we can all, horror of horrors, relate to. Just people doing people things, fucking up, stressing and relieving, living crooked or living straight.
Tracklisting:
1. Green Crossed Eyes
2. Only Child
3. You Can't Win
4. Medication Ran Out
5. Undermined
6. Clowns (For The Klaus Boys)
7. Purgatory Game
8. Stress and Relief
9. In A Cage In The Sea
10. Why Can't I Be The One I Want
11. Somethings Are Best Left Undone
Connect with Edwin R Stevens
Instagram | Bandcamp | Website
Connect with Ankstmusik
Twitter | Bandcamp
More information on Edwin Stevens and Ankst Records' journey together over the years...
Ankst Records’ relationship with Edwin goes back over a decade to the crazy days of Edwin's beloved first band - the incomparable wonder that was Klaus Kinski. Ankst recognised these five young men instantly as the greatest, most underrated band we had ever worked with and recorded a debut album with them within mere days of meeting them. Commercial success and recognition would elude 'Skellington Horse' but the memories of our time together are burned deeply into our shared, battered souls. They are still ridiculously unknown and under-appreciated but we promised ourselves that this blazing initial encounter would not be the sum total of our relationship with these extraordinary young men - and spin on a decade or so we find ourselves working with Edwin again.
Like so many life adventures it began in a dream. Ankst Records boss Emyr woke up one morning with a clear memory of having released a Soul Album by new artist Edwin Stevens and promptly phoned the real Edwin Stevens to inform him of his nocturnal activities - and soon dream imitated reality and as the pandemic faded away God on All Fours came into view.
A new kind of Soul music came along - it was never going to be Ray Charles or James Brown, more Karen Dalton or Gil Scott tugging on the heart strings. Edwin admits that something about the dream like nature of the project spurred him onto a different path - a new name and identity - no longer Irma Vep - and a more direct songwriting style for this album - and yes - for want of a better word - more Soul.
If music means anything these days it means supporting artists like Edwin, the adventurous spirits, the artistic risk takers, the Soul men. Buy his record - catch him live - stop him in the supermarket and bask in his lovely laugh and smile. He is opening his heart to you on this record and I urge you to join in and enter the dream-soul musical world of Edwin R Stevens' God on all Fours.
Tour dates:
19/11 - Glasgow, The Doublet Bar
21/11 - Manchester, The Castle
23/11 - London, The Ivy House
