2021: My Favorite EPs

Another stupid and lurid year is over, and like every other stupid and lurid years I am giving an account of the music I have listened and that have made this year a little less lurid. These are the ten EPs I’ve listened to the most lurid year

(1) Home is Where, I Became Birds (Father/daughter)

This ep is a sum of all the rock and indie-rock idioms, from country-punk, screamo, anthemic- and riff-driven punk, and here you’ll have every pummeling guitar you need to bobble your head and sing along with Brandon McDonald.

(2) CUSP, Spill (Dadstache Records)

First ep for Jen Bender’s CUSP and she’s already proves to have a crystalline talent for pop-punk melodies and a captivating janglegaze. Five tracks that fit well with the Dadstache catalog and with the already well-fed trend from Speedy Ortiz to recent examples like Shady Bug and Mo Dotti: over-saturated guitars, lopsided melodies, a dynamic between dirty and clean sounds and between calm and noise. Five pieces that go smoothly, from the ’90s pop of “Not Certified” to the gentle dissonances of “Illusion Controlling.”

(3) Tar Of, Were I (sound as language)

Four tracks that are an “exercise in uneasy listening”: each one begins as a somewhat regular, classic song, but quickly turn into something unexpected, in a perfect balance between pop-tradition and off-kilter experimentation, between Animal Collective and Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy-era Brian Eno, with some bursts of noise, tape manipulation and ambient-mantra.

(4) JayWood, Some Days (Captured Tracks)

JayWood is a crasis for Winnipeg Manitoba singer-songwriter Jeremy Haywood-Smith, and Some Days is his first ep, recorded in 2015 and re-recorded on four tracks a few years later, and is filled with earworms, funky grooves and bright pop tunes that make you feel better.

(5) more eaze, Yarn (Lillerne Tapes)

It must be said that Texas now has a very respectable electronic and experimental scene. Based in Austin, the prolific Mari Maurice abandons the pop luminescences of her previous works for just the half an hour she needs to create four dilated, quiet and soothing tracks, now sprinkled with field-recordings and samples (“Galv”), now embellished with acoustic chimes (“priority “), now superimposed on a search for light and volatile drones (“Leave”), but always supported by a solid yet unobtrusive melodic backbone.

(6) Carmen Villain, Sketch of Winter – IX Perlita (Geographic North)

Carmen Villain continues to dive headlong into ambient territories and after the fascinating Both Lines Will Be Blue moves to the Atlanta based Geographic North label and makes a chapter of their Sketch for Winter series. Carmen Villain’s mini album is a quintessentially winter album, as only a Norwegian musician could do, from the gentle and enveloping atmospheres of “Everything withut a Shadow” to the soft and nostalgic flute melody of “Agua Azul.”

(7) Militarie Gun, All Roads Lead to the Gun II (Alternatives Label)

Ian Shelton is apparently the only Regional Justice Center fixed member, and now he has created an alter ego for himself with the project Militarie Gun: another powerhardcore act, maybe less violent than RJC, but hey, don’t we all need this pummeling yet melodic hardcore right now?

(8) Stuck, Content That Makes You Feel Good (Exploding in Sound)

Do you need some real post-punk? A bunch of tense, frenetic, twitchy yet somewhat joyuous and fiercely anti-establishment songs? Last year you had Change is Bad, and this year you have this Ep from Chicago’s Stuck, aka one of the best post-punk band you’re going to listen to.

(9) Liv.e, Cwtty +- (In Real Life Music/Awal)

a whirlwind of soul, r’n’b, rap, hip-hop, all mixed together with a dose of Lauryn Hill, a touch of centrifuged Motown, dunked in samples and lo-fi sounds.

(10) American Friend, Sound Under Rock (Dove Cove)

First ep for American Friends, a trio from Austin, Texas, and even if it is only their first ep, they are already somewhat underrated: these geometries of clean and slighty dissonant guitars and luscious basses, a cross bewteen Breeders and the Discord catalogue, with a chant reminiscent of Household and Patio deserve all the attention you can give.