EPs and other oddities ...

My regular reader (Hi Mum!) will know I use this blog as a way of recording my thoughts on all manner of new release albums, with album reviews - both current and “classic” - accounting for a fair portion of everythingsgonegreen content. But I don’t often get around to covering off my many EP or shorter format purchases. Of which there have been quite a few over the past 18 months or so. 

Across 2020 I did manage to record some thoughts on EP releases from Dub Empire (here), Féroces (here), and International Bad Boys Inc. (here), but there were a good number of other worthy EP additions which failed to get a mention on the blog at the time, despite my best intentions. To put that right, this blogpost will be all about some of those new-ish release EPs. That often ignored and mostly unloved stray waif of a format … the hard to nail down “mini album”. The not-quite single and the not-quite album. Usually anything from four to seven tracks in length, and usually less than 30 minutes in duration at its most generous.

I’ll start with 48 Hours at Neon Palms by The C33s, which was released as far back as 2018. The C33s were new to me when a friend sent through a link to the Manchester band’s terrific 2020 single, ‘Harpurhey Hostility’. Which prompted me to work my way back through the band’s discography - all singles, no album yet - until I found the debut EP, which consists of four surf-pop-styled post-punk tracks of the highest calibre. I now have a copy of everything the noisy three-piece have released (to date) and I can hardly wait for a full-length outing. Maybe this year? 

I’ve reviewed three relatively recent Pet Shop Boys albums on the blog, and if you’ve read those reviews, you’ll know how much I struggle with PSB. What I like, I really love. What I don’t like, I dislike intensely. With a passion, even. I just can’t seem to get a handle on my feelings about the prolific duo’s work. So, I was very surprised how much I enjoyed their well-below-the-radar 2020 EP, My Beautiful Laundrette, which I suppose is more formally recognised as a “soundtrack album”. A very belated soundtrack album recorded specifically for a - planned, possibly postponed - 2020 stage production of the Hanif Kureishi-penned 1985 cult classic (film) of the same name. The majority of its seven tracks are instrumentals, but all capture the vibe and atmosphere of the original film perfectly. I can well imagine a couple of these tracks being quite big hits had they been conceived or recorded and included in the film at the time. It takes a special sort of talent to recreate the mood of working class, multicultural, homophobic, peak-Thatcher London, some 35 years after the fact, but Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe play a blinder on My Beautiful Laundrette. If you’ve seen the film, track titles like ‘Omar’s Theme’, ‘Angelic Thug’, and ‘Johnny’s Darkside’ will resonate. If you haven’t seen the film … where the hell have you been?

Minuit Machine’s album Infrarouge was one of the very best things I heard back in 2019, so it was a no brainer for me to pick up a copy of the duo’s EP/single Don’t Run From The Fire when it was released in late 2020. Four tracks, all stunning state-of-the-art dark melodramatic synthpop at its finest. If anything, the release had a harder edge to it than much of the material found on Infrarouge, with an almost industrial feel to the still very danceable title track. I’m fast becoming a big fan of the Synth Religion label/platform it was released on, and I’ve also recently picked up a copy of the duo’s Basic Needs EP of 2021 … although at just three tracks that one might be considered more of a “single”.

I suspect Scottish band Snow Patrol is deeply unfashionable these days. That wasn’t always the case. I loved the breakthrough hit ‘Run’ all those years ago, and of course, the band’s biggest hit, ‘Chasing Cars’, was a global monster which propelled the band well beyond its original “indie pop” niche and into the mainstream stratosphere. 2020 saw Snow Patrol return with a new EP called The Fireside Sessions. Written and recorded during lockdown, it was a fairly unique little beastie in that it was made in collaboration with fans of the band. Five songs written and constructed during a series of streams on Instagram Live called The Saturday Songwriters. How very 2020. More to the point, it’s actually pretty good, with ‘On The Edge Of All This’ in particular becoming a firm favourite of mine during the second half of the year. All proceeds from the sale of the EP went to an anti-poverty charity, so kudos to Snow Patrol for that.

French melodica ace and committed Augustus Pablo disciple Art-X has received plenty of coverage on everythingsgonegreen previously. He’s been quite prolific with output over the past half dozen years or so - just check out this link to his Bandcamp page (here) for proof of that. 2020 saw yet another album release, Tales of Melodia, and while I picked up a copy of that release later in the year and enjoyed it, I was far more impressed with his earlier Polarity EP collaboration alongside The Roots Addict. Six melodica-drenched gems with a deep rootsy dub vibe, I played it loud, and I played it often.

Right at the start of 2021, or perhaps even in late December 2020, the hugely underrated Death Cab for Cutie released The Georgia EP – a five song collection of covers of tunes originally released by artists from Georgia (the US state, not the country). TLC’s ‘Waterfalls’ (yes, really, and it’s a great version even if you’re not a fan of the original), R.E.M.’s ‘Fall On Me’, and Cat Power’s ‘Metal Heart’ being the pick of a fairly decent bunch. The Cat Power cover is close to brilliant, which is as much due to the song itself as Death Cab’s treatment of it. I’m uncertain of the specifics or the precise charity involved, but I’m fairly sure this was another release which saw sale proceeds donated to a cause – in this case, I think, a pro-US Democratic Party-political cause … don’t make me research it, my eyes are already glazing over.

Last, but not least, by dint of it being the most recent EP addition to my collection, we have a mysterious self-titled debut EP from Lisbon-based darkwave devotee Floating Ashes (aka João Pinheiro). And it arrived - via Bandcamp name-your-price (here) - as a fully formed, quite dazzling piece of work, full of pulsating rhythms and glistening synths. With a requisite sense of darkness right at its core. The EP is quite short, at just three tracks across 15 minutes, but since it ticks so many of the musical boxes I hold near and dear, I’ve been giving it a real thrashing over the past month. I really don’t know much about the artist, but if this is what we can expect on future releases, it’ll be more than enough to keep me listening.

 

So that’s a wrap of all of the shorter-form releases I’ve picked up across the past 18 months. A fairly eclectic batch of music, admittedly, incorporating a number of different genres, so not all of it will appeal, but I reckon you could pick up the job lot for a combined outlay of around $50 and not regret any of it.