Following the release of his fifth album, 2017's
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 Landscape's rambling, high-energy opening track, a ten-minute, trippy psych-rock jam that doesn't 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 album's 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" ("I'll get a job today/But I'm sleeping in anyway"), a track that bookends the album in another jam.