Is a musician and writer from Llanfairfechan, Wales.
He lives in Glasgow, Scotland.
Released 10th November, 2023 via Ankstmusik
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.
Latest Music:
Yerba Mansa - Two Glass Eyes
Early Music, 2022
The Birthmarks - Slowly
iiicecapades, 2022
The Web of Lies - Nude With Demon
Wrong Speed Records, 2022
Yerba Mansa Trio - Five Years
Box Records, 2021
Irma Vep & Jon Collin - Washing Machine
Early Music, 2020
Irma Vep - Embarrassed Landscape
Gringo Records, April 2020
Discogs thing
SEAGULLS
Very Bon Books, 2020
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276 pages in an A6, Perfect Bound book with a hand stamped cover designed and laid out by Matthew Walkerdine.
A novel of fourteen stories revolving around a fake North Wales Holiday Park.
One of Dennis Cooper’s favourite fiction books of 2020.
Also featured here on four books he read recently and loved.
“Seagulls is Stevens’ debut novel, a sordid glimpse of an imagined North Walean life, depressing and disgusting but somehow magical, and a version of Pontins quite unfamiliar to that place you may have visited as a child. While I was reading I picked a scab on my ear until it bled and got blood on page 74. It seemed quite fitting. Bumming, wrestling, circumcision, pubey chips, Crosby, Stills, and Nash – it really has it all. Stevens’ capacity for evocative description and dreamlike scene-setting is impeccable. By the end, I was part-aroused, part-nauseated, part-wistful, part-drunk with excitement for his next work. Stevens is my favourite scumbag angel, his first book a perfect flash of his gross, rotting, and beautiful head, and I hope that his hilarious and vivid voice will soon be in your head, too.” – Blair James, Manchester Review of Books
"A new major work from Glasgow’s Edwin Stevens. From behind the myth of musical outputs of Irma Vep, Yerba Mansa and countless other fine acts, Edwin has graced us with a piece of fiction which is stated as ‘NSFW’. Local regional stuff which is character driven, funny-not-funny- and funny again, add a little bit of dark. This comes extremely highly recommended. The first book from new Glasgow publisher Very Bon." - Good Press
"Don't be fooled by the slick cover there's all sorts of sick stuff inside and with that, glimpses of love stories, friendship and sweet delusions. It's truly good as you'd expect from Edwin...14 unreliable stories revolving around a fake holiday park in North Wales...disgusting and funny and sometimes even sweet."
Goodreads
Buy from Good Press
VERY CONSIDERATE
Museums Press / A Plume, 2018
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135mm x 210mm, 20 pages, black and red risograph throughout, saddle stitched, edition of 100, 2018
“Very Considerate is a short story by writer and musician Edwin Stevens. Told from the perspective of a protagonist antagonised by their present, their past, and a world that’s too loud, its cumulative stanza’s creep up on you, gathering and staggering through a-day-in-the-life-of laced with ritual habits, grimacing images.
Stevens is not shy of the explicit, the adult, the bodily fluids, the soft-lit afternoon delights, the darkest fantasies and the avert-your-eyes realities. He tattoos his mark across characters; places; talismans; vehicles; inner monologues that circle thought like a bad habit; dialogues that unfold like a tic; rural fictions; holiday park fictions; next door neighbour fictions; local shop fictions; rubbish job fictions; nights at the social club fictions
BUY
Writing:
Swan Pedalo (Short Story), 2021
SEAGULLS (a novel), 2020
Very Considerate (short story), 2018
A Plume Annual Volume Two (co-editor)
‘Review’ (short story), From Glasgow to Saturn
‘Mick’ (short story), Front Horse Issue 5
Very Bon Books, 2020
276 pages in an A6, Perfect Bound book with a hand stamped cover designed and laid out by Matthew Walkerdine.
A novel of fourteen stories revolving around a fake North Wales Holiday Park.
One of Dennis Cooper’s favourite fiction books of 2020.
Also featured here on four books he read recently and loved.
“Seagulls is Stevens’ debut novel, a sordid glimpse of an imagined North Walean life, depressing and disgusting but somehow magical, and a version of Pontins quite unfamiliar to that place you may have visited as a child. While I was reading I picked a scab on my ear until it bled and got blood on page 74. It seemed quite fitting. Bumming, wrestling, circumcision, pubey chips, Crosby, Stills, and Nash – it really has it all. Stevens’ capacity for evocative description and dreamlike scene-setting is impeccable. By the end, I was part-aroused, part-nauseated, part-wistful, part-drunk with excitement for his next work. Stevens is my favourite scumbag angel, his first book a perfect flash of his gross, rotting, and beautiful head, and I hope that his hilarious and vivid voice will soon be in your head, too.” – Blair James, Manchester Review of Books
"A new major work from Glasgow’s Edwin Stevens. From behind the myth of musical outputs of Irma Vep, Yerba Mansa and countless other fine acts, Edwin has graced us with a piece of fiction which is stated as ‘NSFW’. Local regional stuff which is character driven, funny-not-funny- and funny again, add a little bit of dark. This comes extremely highly recommended. The first book from new Glasgow publisher Very Bon." - Good Press
"Don't be fooled by the slick cover there's all sorts of sick stuff inside and with that, glimpses of love stories, friendship and sweet delusions. It's truly good as you'd expect from Edwin...14 unreliable stories revolving around a fake holiday park in North Wales...disgusting and funny and sometimes even sweet."
Goodreads
Buy from Good Press
VERY CONSIDERATE
Museums Press / A Plume, 2018
135mm x 210mm, 20 pages, black and red risograph throughout, saddle stitched, edition of 100, 2018
“Very Considerate is a short story by writer and musician Edwin Stevens. Told from the perspective of a protagonist antagonised by their present, their past, and a world that’s too loud, its cumulative stanza’s creep up on you, gathering and staggering through a-day-in-the-life-of laced with ritual habits, grimacing images.
Stevens is not shy of the explicit, the adult, the bodily fluids, the soft-lit afternoon delights, the darkest fantasies and the avert-your-eyes realities. He tattoos his mark across characters; places; talismans; vehicles; inner monologues that circle thought like a bad habit; dialogues that unfold like a tic; rural fictions; holiday park fictions; next door neighbour fictions; local shop fictions; rubbish job fictions; nights at the social club fictions
BUY
Writing:
Swan Pedalo (Short Story), 2021
SEAGULLS (a novel), 2020
Very Considerate (short story), 2018
A Plume Annual Volume Two (co-editor)
‘Review’ (short story), From Glasgow to Saturn
‘Mick’ (short story), Front Horse Issue 5