Edwin R Stevens – Pontio, Bangor – October 5th 2024
As I am sure many of you will be able to attest, it’s cold/Covid/flu season, and as a victim of one of the three (maybe all) I was wavering on whether or not to make the four + hour round trip to Bangor…only I wasn’t really.
The three-day PSYLENCE event at the wonderful Pontio theatre/cinema/gig space in Bangor was this year in memory of Ankst Recordiau supremo Emyr Glyn Williams who passed away in January, and who was also the cinema director at the venue. Emyr was a wonderful human being and one of his protégé’s was playing tonight, so really it was a no brainer. Edwin R Stevens was previously a member of the anarcho-chaotic ensemble known as Klaus Kinski and Stevens always speaks fondly of those times and in particular Emyr’s fatherly influence that kinda/sorta kept them in check. I lost track of the drummer from Klaus Kinski (for it is he) since those days until discovering last year’s strangely moving and wondrous God On All Fours and was enlightened that he also has two other concurrent projects running.
Yerba Mansa has seen him release some noisy and riotous psychedelia with Andrew Cheetham, his latest Gravity’s Joke, contains an 18 minute long mesmerising and shattering Middle Eastern vibe alongside a comparatively short 8-minute Slint like (massive compliment) drawl. He also is Irma Vep who released the outstanding and thrilling Embarrassed Landscape last year. You like Velvet Underground? Television? Big Star? Bonnie Prince Billy? They are all in that album and more as it oscillates frenetically, veering from joyous screes of noise; to heart-breaking, to plaintive, to arch country strummed sadness. Mining his back catalogue has been a revelation and right now he is at the peak of his powers. A wide and varied musical palette combined with a poet’s eye for verse, he is incredibly talented and criminally unheard. You don’t even have the excuse of him singing in Welsh not to explore…because he doesn’t, he sings in English. Once you have heard his oeuvre and sampled his groove, seeing him live is like finding a golden ticket in a Wonka bar. So what’s keeping you? You’ll thank me later*.
So..you know, I was gonna go – regardless of whatever ailments (real and imagined as always) were troubling me.
The drive, once past Rhyl, is a joy in itself as the mountains hover majestically to the left bearing witness to the daily dramas that the Irish Sea coughs up to the right. Arriving in a Bangor bathed in late afternoon rays the Pontio building looked magnificent, a hub of culture to ally with the academia proffered by the neighbouring University’s perched hallowed halls.
Bangor…you’ve never had it so good.
Tonight was Edwin solo and his opening salvo was to perform the first four songs from his incredible God On All Fours album, which was the last Ankst release in Emyr’s fabulous full and always fun lifetime. Coat dumped on floor, askew baseball cap, plaid shirt, baggy pants, delicious vocals, Edwin is like a twenty first century and X-Rated Woody Guthrie. Green Crossed Eyes is a quite beautiful contemplative opener and contains lyrical wonder that Guthrie could never have conjured however brilliant his songs – “Tragedy/between your mother and me/we’ve had enough to grieve/ between the drink/ and the blink/of a black eyed gull…” and “You had to die to become real/you had to die to make me feel/like I could speak again/to the God with the rusty bike…” It is a suitably entrancing beginning to tonight’s proceedings. The jaunty and smile invoking Only Child again surprises with “Love is a stray dog/and its set on fire by kids…” and “You’re not my real Dad/but you’re the best sex my mother’s ever had…” amongst other standout lines like “When something goes wrong and it sounds like this…” with accompanying bum note. Stevens has a unique vocal delivery and accent which only partially places him in North Wales and Pontio is suitably hushed (a rare thing these days), allowing the songs to explore life on the fringes – whilst scratching that little bit deeper at the dark underbelly of the taboo.
I didn’t expect Stevens to play You Can’t Win next because I imagined it difficult to recreate due to it’s studied and carefully structured raga guitar lines, but play it he did and aside from a split-second guitar lead glitch it was practically note perfect and equally mesmerising live as it is on vinyl. “Sweatshop stepson/happy witchhunt…”, lyrically I am not sure Edwin has an equal, a point he emphasises in Medication Ran Out with talk of “skid marks in the bath” and “I was only in the shop buying tampons for my wife/when some cunt stole my bike…” before going on to explain how the perpetrator now shares a cell with a paedophile. Meanwhile, the somewhat sympathising victim continues to bemoan the fact that his medication ran out. A new song Hell is Small was making it’s debut tonight and it examines self-created hells within and the gut wrenching horrors in the external world, whilst considering how much we allow all of that to hurt us. Yup, all that in a four-minute song. It was wonderful and poignant, and suggests that Edwin’s forthcoming album will maintain the same high standards of his last three, various guised, releases. You Know I’ve Been Ill, a standout culled from No Handshake Blues, is a stonking slow build on the album as it is tonight in Bangor, as well as being just one of a plethora of remarkable songs. Given that most of those aired tonight are full band affairs on record, seeing Stevens solo this evening suits the vulnerability expressed in a number of the songs, whether it is he, or a character from one of his short stories set to music, narrating. Introducing another ‘new’ song, Edwin explained that Criminal was meant to be on God On All Fours but after a running order discussion with Emyr on whether they could fit it on, they decided it was to be jettisoned in favour of a shorter song, a decision Edwin half regretted. It wouldn’t have been out of place with the themes of that album but I wonder where it would have fitted in, because for best effect God On All Fours is a beginning to end listen. Given that the horizon sees a new solo album promised, hopefully it will appear on there because it is excellent and prescient. What is definitely criminal is that so few people know of Edwin R Stevens various incarnations.
“Ugly thing/so ugly you should drown it/gripping it’s neck/you have to turn your head/ and watch the pigeons peck at dog shit…” so begins another new song, Ugly Thing which sees further David Lynch-like visions of the underworld labyrinths of small-town mundanity set to beautiful melodies, had Lynch grown up in a tough village shadowed by the mysterious mountains that tower over the North Wales coast. Can you think of anyone else who writes like this? Lou Reed? Arab Strap? Perhaps but not quite. There is a brutal honesty and consistent cleverness in Stevens‘ dark stories set to some effortless memorable refrains, and the overall sound is his alone.
“Between you, me and the swinging trees/Frayed by cartoon lightning…” is followed by the devastating burn of “Ugly thing/You know I can’t stand it/When they shine a light from this angle/ you could be confused as cute in this outfit/Ugly thing”, and then ends with “Feel the burnt-out ambition of the bar tender’s eyes/Taste the cold sore I contracted from my ex-wife/Ugly mind, ugly life/Ugly thing…”. It is quite the lyric, and that is without mentioning “gimpy plagues” “toothy head from a maiden” and “Norman Bates’ mother”.
The closing trio of songs offer further evidence of a remarkable and unique song-writing ability. I Hung My Shadow and Dumb In The Blood Room are both news songs and both sizzle quietly with a lurking lyrical malevolence beneath smiling melodies, the former containing the astonishing “Hear your laughter in the wind/the moans of all the ghouls you’ve been pegging”. Both are songs that sparkle in their knowing individuality. The Daniel Johnson-esque closing Something Are Best Left Undone which is also the final song on God On All Fours is a beautiful and heart-breaking ballad of defeat with poetic U-Turns such “The horse you rode in on/just died…”. Tonight, as it closes, Stevens drops his guitar to a thud of feedback and is gone.
This was a jaw dropping showcase of the singular talent of Edwin R Stevens. No backdrops, no accompaniment, just him and an electric guitar and the songs positively shone. If you have anything like great taste in music you will be mesmerised. If you enjoy poetry you will be blown over. There is sly wit dancing over beautifully empathetic songs that document despair, a grim humour often being the last refuge of the sad.
Edwin R Stevens. A singular artist and a remarkably gifted song-writer. We should be thankful that he is becoming increasingly prolific.
www.irmavepirmavep.bandcamp.com/music
*Edwin R Stevens has no plans to gig currently and rarely does. If you get the chance you know what to do.
