This is Levi’s first proper solo release, but in typically irreverent fashion, they nimbly eschew the prerequisite amount of intimacy by playing fast and loose with distorting textural qualities; distantly echoing vocals, scorched guitar distortion, and a warm blanket of tape hiss. The rock song skeletons of ‘Kind of Strange’ and ‘One Tear’ are slyly obscured by a torrent of fuzz, while the sounds of domesticity — a phone alarm, or the album’s titular dog — become an ersatz backing band on the likes of ‘Chains Baggy’. The sonic ethos is at its most evocative on ‘Wings’, sounding heavily like a cut from an early My Bloody Valentine session.

Even with this much inscrutability, Ruff Dog succeeds in feeling like a deeply personal record granting the listener a glimpse into Levi’s world.