411 Music Ten Deep 9.04.09: Top Ten EPs

Posted by Andrew Moll on 09.04.2009

The records are short but sweet this week as we take a look at the Top Ten EPs. See where work by Radiohead, Alice in Chains, Nine Inch Nails and more rank on the list in this week's edition of 411 Music Ten Deep.


(Disclaimer: All opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of 411 Music and its staff.)


Welcome everybody to the seventh edition of 411 Music Ten Deep, the weekly countdown of all things music. Before we get on with this week's list I have a couple things that I want to get out of the way. First, if you haven't seen Inglourious Basterds yet, then do so immediately. If you are even remotely a fan of Quentin Tarantino and his films then you will love it; it's the most entertaining foreign film you'll see all year. Secondly, like I mentioned last week Friday is the new day for the column so look for it each day from here on out. And with that done, let's look back at last week's list of the Top Ten Classic Soul Songs and the comments you guys left.





I agree with Otis Redding being at the top but I still say his best song is I've Been Loving You Too Long. This is a great list but I think RESPECT is a little too high.
Posted By: Tim (Guest) on August 28, 2009 at 01:28 AM

"I've Been Loving You Too Long" is indeed great, as is most of Otis Blue. When it comes to "Respect" I agree that musically it may not be the second best song on the list, but when it comes to the impact the song had in the women's movement and that it basically created the "Queen of Soul," I'd say it deserves its placement on the list.

Great list this week. Personally I'd have had A Change is Gonna come at the top but I can't really argue with Otis.
Posted By: nax (Guest) on August 28, 2009 at 10:02 AM

this is the best list i have ever seen, i believe. I have loved soul music since i was a kid, and my parents, who werent allowed to listen to it as children, absolutely loved to sing the songs with me. Redding is probably one of my favorite, if not my favorite, characters in all of music, particularly soul, and especially rock and roll. Thanks for the wonderful list, gotta send out my love for "Try A Little Tenderness".
Posted By: Guest#8040 (Guest) on August 28, 2009 at 10:57 AM

I feel the same way about Otis, probably the best voice I've ever heard from soul or any other genre and just an awesome performer.

Not really a huge fan of soul, but I can say without a doubt that Otis Redding deserves to be at the top of this list.
Posted By: Blode (Guest) on August 29, 2009 at 05:20 PM

From the looks of it last week's list was well received although I could have had any collection of ten great soul songs and that list would have been a good one. We'll see if this week's list gets the same reception, although somehow I doubt it. But hey, a little controversy can be a good thing.




Top Ten EPs



The EP, or "extended play" has been a part of music for about ninety years and in the modern era of rock and roll the EP has been used as a promotional tool, a way for a new band to get their music released or established bands to release new material without worrying about any filler. EPs tend to be around twenty to thirty minutes long with a few songs on them, and all the EPs mentioned in this list pack a lot into a small timeframe, making the most of the opportunity. In fact, many of these are better than a lot of full-length albums you'll hear and even stand as the best works by certain bands. So this week will be a look at the short but sweet albums by some great bands with The Top Ten EPs. But before that, let's see the EPs that fell just short of making the cut.

Some Honorable Mentions: Animal Collective - Water Curses; Black Flag - Nervous Breakdown; Fugazi - Margin Walker; Hüsker Dü - Metal Circus; The Mars Volta - Tremulant; Minus the Bear - They Make Beer Commercials Like This; My Bloody Valentine - Tremolo; The Strokes - The Modern Age; Tool - Opiate; TV on the Radio - Young Liars




10. Klaxons - Xan Valleys


Klaxons' debut EP proved them to be a fully formed band, one that had already combined their influences into something exciting and original; you never get the feeling that Klaxons are searching for their sound, but instead they sound confident and assured in it. Taking some cues from the late 1980s/early 1990s UK rave scene, Klaxons led a so-called "nu-rave" movement, one that emphasized dance music while also focusing on indie rock. A lot of the songs on the EP are more hopped-up versions of the dance punk that bands like Franz Ferdinand and Bloc Party had been doing. Filled with plenty of grooves and killer bass lines, the songs that make up Xan Valleys may have been singles before being compiled together, but they have a real cohesiveness that is surprising for a band so young. Even the addition of two remixes, one from Van She and one from Crystal Castles, doesn't hurt the EP as their performed in much the same vain as the other four songs are.





The first tracks double as the best ones here and probably the best in the band's career so far. "Gravity's Rainbow" is all bass and hooks, full of irreverence and fun. When they sing, "Come with me, come with me/We'll travel to infinity," you immediately want to follow them. This is a near-perfect combination of dance rock, the realization of a genre that had sprung up just a few years earlier. That feeling continues with "Atlantis to Interzone," which opens with a blaring siren and shouts of "DJ!" this is a party song all the way. Propelled forward by a pounding drum while shifting between dance and rock flawlessly, "Atlantis to Interzone" is a somewhat chaotic song that shows all the things that make the band so great and exciting. The next song "4 Horsemen of 2012" is almost abrasive while their cover of Kicks Like a Mule's hit "The Bouncer" is a start-and-stop head banger, and both songs retain the energy of the standout first two tracks. Xan Valleys shows a band already formed into a real entity and it set the stage for their successful debut LP.





9. Nine Inch Nails - Broken


At the time this EP was recorded, Trent Reznor was in a transitional period as Nine Inch Nails was dealing with the aftermath of Pretty Hate Machine's success. That album bordered on synthpop at times, but this album was much more aggressive and industrial and noise rock record that still managed to contain many of the pop elements that have kept NIN relevant over the years. But overall, Broken is a brutal listening experience since Reznor is on the attack throughout as every guitar chord and drum beat has malicious intent. One listen to something like "Last" and you'll feel like you've been through a twelve round fight or something, but that's the fun of it. Few musicians have ever been better at putting their anger to music than Reznor and every bit of it comes through on the EP. He was also going through bitter dispute with his record label at the time so it's no surprise that Reznor channeled that frustration into the music, and even maybe in song titles like "Help Me I Am in Hell" or "Happiness in Slavery."





The songs "Happiness in Slavery" and "Wish" both became hit singles because even Reznor, a man with no love lost for the music industry and obviously is good at creating abrasive music, can appreciate a good hook. Both those songs are catchy, even with things like the noise rock guitars that burst in on "Wish;" the intention may be for them to be aggressive, but they still are catchy and instantly memorable. Despite that, these songs aren't meant to be hummed or enjoyed at a party; with them, Reznor took industrial music to a whole new level and turned synthesizers into weapons in order to portray his agony. He would perfect that style with his next full length The Downward Spiral but it was with Broken that Reznor found the perfect way to his message across, even if it meant alienating plenty of people along the way.





8. Pavement - Watery, Domestic


Despite having four songs and being only eleven minutes long, Pavement's Watery, Domestic is an important piece in the band's history, serving as a transition from the lo-fi sounds of their legendary debut Slanted and Enchanted to the leaner and more classic-rock inspired work of the subsequent albums. When you record your songs with a marked improvement in quality that allows certain elements of songs to come to the forefront, and in the case of Pavement it was their amazing melodies. They were apparent on their debut, but on this EP they are what make the songs great. I doubt that there is a Pavement fan alive that wouldn't consider "Shoot the Singer (1 Sick Verse)" as one of their crowning achievements, a song full of the kind of detached sincerity that made Pavement so cool and endearing in the first place.





None of that is to stay that Watery, Domestic is some ultra-accessible record with plenty of pop shine to it. The edges are still plenty rough and a song like "(Linden) Lions" requires no special production as the shambled work of then-drummer Gary Young inspires the band for a song that could have easily found a spot on Slanted and Enchanted. It's not a big surprise that Young would be gone by the band's second album as they were already moving away from his influence and preparing for varied work, and the songs "Texas Never Whispers" and "Frontwards" showed just how good Stephen Malkmus and Scott Kannberg were at songwriting. It takes a lot of skill to take lyrics like, "Well I've got style/Miles and miles/So much style that it's wasted" and make them mean something, but Pavement pull it off. Throw in the fact that the music is as alternately beautiful and off-kilter as always, and that this is such an important piece of music in Pavement's development into the probably the best indie rock band ever, and you've got yourself a classic EP.





7. Tokyo Police Club - A Lesson in Crime


Tokyo Police Club have never tried to reinvent the wheel with their music and they know that there will always be a place for young and energetic rock, the kind they excel at on their first EP. Starting off fast and furious with "Cheer It On" and singer Dave Monks' howl of "Operator! Get me the President of the world! This is an emergency!" you know exactly what Tokyo Police Club has in store for you. Burning through eight songs in just sixteen minutes that are packed with exuberance and catchy hooks, the EP fails to let up for more than a moment. Even a more restrained track like "Citizens of Tomorrow" gets intense as it goes while detailing the 2009 takeover of the world by robots. In case those kinds of lyrics couldn't clue you in, these are young kids and what they did here was make a collection of great garage rock songs and doing it better and with more fun than The Strokes did earlier this decade.





You would think it would be tough for a band this young to know how to maximize their talents but TPC does so here, keeping everything tight and never letting anything meander. There are no contrived theatrics, but instead some theatrics that are built right into the songs, from the lyrics about robots or the opening desperate calls to presidents to simple song structure and some well placed hand clapping. Normally young bands are still trying to find their sound, but much like Klaxons did with their EP the same year, Tokyo Police Club are assured and confident. They never fall into pretentious excess since they know exactly what they are: a young garage band capable of making lean, fun and energetic rock. They got away from that a little on their first full-length and as a result that wasn't as good as their first EP. But no matter what else they do, A Lesson in Crime will always be a classic.





6. Pixies - Come On Pilgrim


The Pixies became the biggest thing in indie rock in the late 1980s, creating the loud/soft/loud sound that would make Nirvana superstars, but it all started in 1987 with this EP. All of the Pixies' trademarks are here, from Kim Deal's soft voice and nimble bass to Joey Santiago's angular guitar leads, and Black Francis's ungodly shriek and sick sense of humor. The first song, "Caribou" is classic Pixies, with those raw and heavy drums and features Francis going from the crooning the song's title to howling "Repent!" A couple of the songs are also sung in Spanish due to Francis' obsession with Puerto Rico based on a trip he took there once that would inspire "Wave of Mutilation." You really don't see a difference between this band and the one that would make the classics Surfer Rosa and Doolittle, which is a testament to just how quickly the band came together to make something special.





Black Francis has always enjoyed exploring unusual lyrical territory and that's evident on this record on "The Holiday Song" and "Nimrod's Son," which both deal with the subject of incest. Certainly not typical for pop music, but you can't put any subject past Francis. But it never feels cheap or anything, it's just another wacky tangent from a great songwriter that wasn't interested in typical stuff. Besides, any time you can write a lyric like "My sister held me close and whispered to my bleeding head/You are the son of a motherfucker," you earn the write to sing about whatever the hell you want to sing about. Come on Pilgrim also features the best song ever written about sexual frustration, "I've Been Tired" that is raw and direct like many great Pixies songs, but still maintains enough charms and hooks to stay enjoyable. The Pixies would go from here to much bigger heights but this EP showed the world what they could do and the band made the most of it.





5. Radiohead - Airbag/How Am I Driving?


When you make a classic album like Radiohead did with OK Computer, chances are you're going to have a few good songs left over, and Radiohead took those songs and made themselves a brand new EP. Opening with the OK Computer track "Airbag," the rest of the EP's tracks are culled from European B-sides and put together with "Airbag" to make the record. The six other songs are all great, but for the most part the sound of these songs didn't match that of OK Computer so you can see why such quality songs wouldn't make a full length album. Interestingly, some of the songs seem to be representative of The Bends, while the use of electronics on "Meeting in the Aisle" seems to foreshadow Kid A a little bit. So it's cool to have a record that shows where Radiohead had been, where they were at the time, where they would be going.





In my opinion the best song of the bunch is "Polyethylene, Pts. 1 & 2" and not surprisingly it's apparently the song that came the closest to making the cut for OK Computer due to its spacey quality and a flair for some dramatics. It also has Thom Yorke singing the great verse, "So sell your suit and tie and come and live with me/Leukemia, schizophrenia, polyethylene/There is no significant risk to your health /She used to be beautiful once as well." When the stuff from your recording sessions that become B-sides to your European singles before being stuffed together with other B-sides for an EP led by an album track are this damn good, you know you're a pretty good band. In fact this EP, along with the "B-sides album" Amnesiac, it's pretty obvious that Radiohead are just better than everybody else. To have an EP like Airbag/How Am I Driving? is just an embarrassment of riches and proof that Radiohead are indeed the best of their generation.





4. Minor Threat - Minor Threat


Minor Threat played really, really fast. They are the definitive hardcore band, and their self-titled EP is one of hardcore's definitive documents. Eight songs in a mind blowing nine minutes go by and leave you exhausted. The band never even considers pausing for a second; when one punk rock blast is over, another one begins. Ian MacKaye's bark is so direct and so impassioned that he could probably make you do or feel anything he might wants, although MacKaye has always been a man focused on being an individual despite any outside pressures. That idea is obvious on "Straight Edge," the song that inadvertently started a movement. Forty-five seconds full of manic guitars and high speed drums, MacKaye adds in his yell of "I've got straight edge!" is an unwavering and intense proclamation that has become the band, and probably MacKaye's, unintentional manifesto. The band was uncompromising in their ideals and music, which is why their fans are as dedicated and passionate as any.





MacKaye simply commented on the world around him and the problems that he saw in many Minor Threat songs, be they drugs and alcohol, loudmouths, religious zealots or violent drunks. This helps make Minor Threat a document of a certain period in time in Washington, D.C., one that created a hotbed of punk rock. No band better defined "hardcore" than Minor Threat, and while this EP isn't the most essential album in their catalog (get Complete Discography for, well, their complete discography), but Minor Threat is their first statement and a collection of hardnosed songs that are still amazing to listen to. When these songs were released they were astonishing for their speed and aggression, and none of that astonishment is gone more than twenty-five years later.





3. Alice In Chains - Jar of Flies


The first EP to ever reach the number one spot on the Billboard album chart, Jar of Flies might be the best album Alice In Chains ever recorded, which is really saying something concerning a band as good as them. But where their previous album Dirt was a dark, heavy and muddy heroin album, Jar of Flies opened things up slightly with the use of acoustic guitars and strings. Things are still moody and singer Layne Staley doesn't sound like he's found much catharsis, but this album makes great use of the band's dichotomy between its dark lyrics and the beautiful harmonies Staley created with Jerry Cantrell. A song like "Rotten Apple" is harrowingly gorgeous as Alice In Chains was perfecting the method of finding beauty in darkness. Lyrics like "And yet I find/And yet I find/Repeating in my head/If I can't be my own/I'd feel better dead" shouldn't have the beauty that they do, but Staley's delivery combined with the song's composition milk every bit of emotion possible from it.





Two of Alice In Chains' better songs appear on the EP too with "I Stay Away" being a highly orchestrated song that added some heaviness to the proceedings. Featuring a lighter chorus and opening riff from Cantrell, the song enters a darker part that harkens back to Dirt but once the chorus hits, the harmonies come back as the song reaches dramatic heights that the band had never approached before. Through all the heavy songs about self-hatred and drug use there was still hope in the band's music and it shines through on this song and also on the other standout track "No Excuses." This is practically a pop song, although done in an AIC way with lyrics about a complex relationship (apparently written by Cantrell about his relationship with Staley) and more of their stunning harmonies. There's a real tenderness to the song and that helps make it one of their best songs. All in all, Jar of Flies proved that Alice In Chains were more than just grunge rockers and were capable of so much more.





2. Mission of Burma - Signals, Calls and Marches


Signals, Calls and Marches opens up with what I think is undoubtedly one of the best rock songs ever written and continues on greatly from there. "That's When I Reach For My Revolver" fortunately doesn't overshadow the rest of the album since the rest of the songs are just so damn great. Burma was an art rock band that played louder than punk band was and their visceral attack is what made people take notice, although their sound was smartly cleaned up somewhat for their first EP. That extra bit of sheen allowed the songs shine instead of just having the sheer volume of it all overwhelm the listener. But for all their aggressiveness and arty tendencies, Burma couldn't help from writing great pop hooks that instantly infectious. Never was that more apparent than on "Revolver," a track with an incendiary chorus of "That's when I reach for my revolver/That's when it all gets blown away/That's when I reach for my revolver/The spirit fights to find its way." Clint Conley's epic is the song that best defines the term post-punk and inspired god knows how many bands that followed.





There's a lot more to the EP than just "Revolver" though, as Roger Miller's contributions showcase his more abrasive style. His songs were full of tension that never seemed to dissipate that featured of phrases like "This is not a photograph, no" and "Fame and fortune is a stupid game/And fame and fortune is the game I play" which sounds a little silly coming from a band that few people knew at the time but it works in the context of a Burma song. They were always going for something different, adding complex arrangement, harsh drumming and angular guitars to catchy melodies. I can't think of too many American rock bands that have made as an impressive debut as Mission of Burma did with Signals, Calls and Marches a punk rock classic that features six legitimately great songs and plenty of originality. With plenty of power and passion, Burma made their mark with their first EP.





1. Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Slow Riot for New Zerø Kanada


Post-rock is a genre that lends itself to theatrics and moments were what was once quite explodes into something dramatic and intense. No post-rock band has ever done it better than Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and Slow Riot is their absolute best recording, two songs and twenty eight minutes long, featuring hair-raising moments that only GY!BE could have created. Any fan of the band can tell you about the moments when listening to a track of theirs where they felt something that you rarely feel when listening to music. You get that feeling constantly when listening to this EP, as the first track "Moya" builds slowly for a few minutes, creating a tense atmosphere of strings and guitars that evokes feeling of sadness and uncertainty. The more instruments that become audible, mostly guitars and drums, the more cathartic the whole thing becomes until the band can't control themselves and turn it all into a runaway freight train and a sonic assault before it breaks in one great moment, but that too dissolves as the song winds down to the same hum of strings that it opened with.





It all sets the stage for "Blaise Bailey Finnegan III," a track of epic proportions that no band could even consider matching. Much like "Moya" it also slowly builds, this time overlapped by an interview with a street poet who expounds his wisdom on the government and the state of the world, stating that the US is a "third world country." The whole thing is backed by a quiet instrumental part of guitars, strings and more that let the man speak for himself, although most of what he says is taken right from an Iron Maiden song. "BBF3" at this point is an eerie song, and you're not sure where they band plans on going with it. But it all begins to build again; rising to a climax that puts anything else they've recorded the shame, the ultimate in post-rock dramatics. The guitars soar for minutes until there is nowhere left for them to go, and then they only get more intense. To me, the point from about the eleven minute mark until about 14:45 or so, is as good as music can get as it provides the most intense, chaotic, cathartic and breathtaking sequence I can ever recall hearing. The song slowly reaches its violin-led end, like the postscript to a war battle that just ended, and that's how the listener feels. The composition of such a song and EP is the pinnacle to me, the type of arrangements and performance that can't be duplicated, and brings new things out with each listen. No other EP, and few LPs, can compete with its sheer emotion and passion, and that is why it stands alone at the top. Every piece of popular music from here on out is trying and failing to match Slow Riot.



That'll do it for this week folks, thanks for reading. If you have any questions, comments or concerns feel free to let me know, and make sure to leave your own lists in the comments. I'll see you all next week. And if you're out on your bike tonight, do wear white.