In Which I Arrive at the Conclusion that 2011 is the Year of the EP

The other day, incidentally while sitting through the previews for the Sarah Palin documentary (about which I’d like to say a word or two in the very near future), I was ordering in my head a cursory list of the records that have come out this year that I’ve enjoyed the most. During this process I saw a slight pattern that doesn’t usually happen with me, namely, and as the title of this post would suggest, that I have become obsessed with a disproportionate number of EPs.

I’ve always had an inkling that there might be an argument to be made in favor of the EP as the pinnacle of musical expression, particularly in the current age of digital dissemination. It’s brevity effectively lowers the stakes as compared to the full length album form. If a folk rock group wants to try out something a little off the beaten path, an EP is a great place to do it, since they don’t have to commit to it for 12 plus songs. The EP form also removes the chance for a self aware band to include any amount of filler. At four or five songs in length, even one song of sub-par material would be garishly out of place.

So far in 2011 I’ve become smitten with a number of EPs that, as far as I can tell, share only the trait of inherently high quality (that is, I think they’re sufficiently diverse). I’ve already talked about the most recent one- Giant Peach’s People Don’t Believe Me. Some of the others are as follows:

Childish Gambino- EP: I didn’t get this one at first. I just thought it was a low quality actor vanity project with too mainstream (lamestream [it's these types of jokes, fwiw, that get me through my day, I know that's a little depressing]) production and weak flow. Then, one night when I was up way too late the night before a paper on the ontological significance of dance among West African people was due, something clicked. I listened to it twice. Three times. Over and over for almost three hours. After probably hundreds of replays, I’ve still got only a vague notion of what it is about this EP that really draws me in. As I see it, it’s almost entirely about the lyrics, and about the way Glover emotes through them. His verses are of the sort that balance relatability and voyeurism in such a way that I the listener feels as if he could legitimately hang out with Glover and get along quite well, while constantly reasserting that you probably won’t ever get the chance to hang out with him because is damn famous. He’s humble without being self-effacing, but also confident in a way that comes across as rank arrogance in rappers of lesser emotive abilities. He’s funny, but doesn’t come across as if he’s trying to be a comedian slash rapper. He’s funny in the way that your clever friend tries to be, but can’t achieve because the dude just isn’t Donald Glover. He doesn’t have the greatest flow, or the most clever rhyme patterns, but he frankly doesn’t need it. Gambino has a singular personality that is conveyed nearly perfectly in this short little EP, and the fact that it’s such a brief shot leaves the listener wanting more at just the right time.

Extra Life – Ripped Heart: Holy Lord. I can’t talk enough about how much I love the music that Charlie Looker (main guy in Extra Life, formerly of Zs who are also excellent) makes. Melodically, I think this man is almost entirely unparalleled. They snake around in unexpected ways and extend for longer than is reasonable and longer than lesser musicians would even approach being able to do. And his voice, though it’s got a nasal edge (that I’ll admit I love), is incredibly clear and controlled. He’s got a range that enables him to trace those twisting melodies up and down the chromatic scale. The arrangements are musically complex without being obnoxiously proggy, too, which I find just about as rad as it gets. Also, the full length Made Flesh is about my favorite thing ever, and this EP basically just concentrates that beauty into a five song shot in the arm.

Demdike Stare- Forest of Evil, Liberation Through Hearing, & Voices of Dust: These EPs have been combined into a big pack called Tryptych for re-release which in my estimation, is delightful. Actually delightful might not be an appropriate word for these guys. There is about zero delight in the music (the amount of delight the music gives me upon reflection, of course, notwithstanding). An anecdote is the easiest way for me to express how I feel about this triptych. It was a Sunday night, I had just gotten back in town from visiting my parents. I hadn’t slept well the few previous nights because of the the low-quality/ extreme age of my mattress at my parents’ house. I was a little bleary eyed. It turns out, through a variety of circumstances that I do not wish to recall (and which are not germane to this anecdote) there was to be a party at my house that night. When I got home the living room was almost completely empty of valuables, it looked spare and weird. I thought about trying to get some work done before the house descended into liquor fueled madness, but ended up sitting on the couch reading and listening to music that I hoped would upset the partygoers (Can, it was promptly usurped when the first person arrived). After about an hour of “partying” I decided to go for a drive, mostly to get away from the constant pulse of noise. I decided, ill advisedly, to listen to Forest of Evil. It was completely terrifying. I felt black figures circling my car at every stop light. I was convinced that every headlight behind me was a murderer tailing me, just waiting for me to stop at a gas station, or return home. Every car driving toward me was a cop, a cop that was going to peg me for doing something illegal that I didn’t realize I was doing but that was so illegal that I would be immediately jailed for life. Demdike Stare makes terrifying music. Music that induces paranoia, revelry, and, most importantly, the desire to drive like a spy in enemy territory.

James Blake- the smattering of EPs he has released: I know, I know, many of these didn’t come out this year (though the full length did and it’s one of the best things I’ve heard this year, it seems to get better every time I listen to it). Even so, I’ve listened to them more this year than last (I didn’t really bother checking them out until early 2011) and I’ve become completely obsessed. As I understand it, they’ve taken on almost mythical status in some dubstep circles, so I’m not going to even try to contribute something new about them. Just know they’re astoundingly breathtaking, and, yes, they’re much better than the full length. Honesty: I only include these to add strength to my implicit argument about the surge of high quality EPs lately, not so I could say anything about them of “critical value.”

Wrap-up: Nothing I write here will be of any inherent value beyond boiler plate “wrap-up speak” (e.g. “So as you can see” and/or “quite clearly”) so I’m just going to stop writing and I hope my potential readers appreciate the circumventing of bullshit. And just so it’s out here, I take issue with those of you tsk-tsking at me for not writing a conclusion paragraph, and I especially have a bone to pick with those of you who assume (baselessly I might add, I hope, you’ll have to ask my lit professors for quantifiable evidence one way or the other) that I’m avoiding this because I haven’t got it in me to effectively conclude an essay (and now that this is breaking in to self-awareness even more than usual, I can’t decide if I should leave all the split infinitives in, like the one in the last sentence. The grammarian in me wants to remove all of them. The part of me that’s read several essays about infinitive splitting by curmudgeonly old men wants to gleefully leave them all in). I’ve got low self-esteem! Leave me alone armchair editors! I’ll end blog posts however I want them! Thank your stars you got written word instead of all pictures and maybe a couple of sentences like “James Black fulfills his musical potential in the righteous and notorious way!” and “Community star also raps! Who knew?”

Alright alright, this is turning in to an obnoxious personal essay. I’ll take it to Tumblr.