This morning the Spotify algorithm gifted me with “Cry Love”, a 1972 EP by a group called The Sweet & Innocent. It’s about 13 minutes long in total—four tracks. It’s a perfect EP front to back for me. The vocals are pristine and gorgeous, the harmonies church-familiar and sweet. I highly recommend. Even though I recently wrote about slowing down, there’s respect in my heart for brevity too.
EPs are inherently in betweens— not just one or two singles, not a full album. Yes, the origins of them were largely functional as they were cheaper to produce and reproduce. But outside of function, there’s something incredibly artful and precise about choice there. If we only have 15 minutes of your time, 15 minutes to catch your ear, what would we sing/play?
I have a different perception of digital EPs now that perhaps is divergent from the original function of their predecessor. These days, digital EPs almost feel like a quarter-step on the way to a longer project, at worst like unfinished or discarded tracks. Like clearing the throat. Modern EPs fall in line with our sped up sense of time. They feel rushed. They drip with the sweat of the artist’s very real fear of not pushing out music quickly enough.
This is definitely, in part, because we’ve lost the physicality of music production. I’m not here to lament that, only to say that it’s shifted our perception of musical labor, time. And the uniqueness of musical objects has faded. In my lifetime alone, we’ve rapidly surpassed the readymade production of EPs and LPs and CDs into the digisphere. That’s why vinyl (aside from its literal appreciation as a vintage object) is worth so much to us youngins now. It’s foreign. We’re rushing K*nye because in our subconscious, it takes two seconds to upload and download, which greatly shifts our perspective in terms of how long it takes to create.
A brief digression into Carter lore.
In the late 80’s my dad had a band called Divinity. (If you’re interested, here is a very 80’s video of their single “Touch Me (With Your Magic)” it’s great.) He recently shared a photo of a 1988 tape they made, and I was under the impression it was an 8 track. But I asked him this morning and he corrected me— it’s a reel to reel.
There’s something about seeing the reels turning and feeding in a reel to reel player that feels very much like an exposure of process. It makes me think of the precision of literal, physical splicing of film and audio. It’s got to be physically pristine and dirt-free to even play correctly. It’s sort of ironic— the cumbersome, inconvenient nature of the reel to reel player itself against the brevity of the two tracks recorded. But that’s the visible labor involved. We’ve got 8 minutes and 43 seconds of your time.
My dad and granddad have been transferring old reel to reels of audio from our church in an act of preservation and archivism. And I love that. We don’t have that anymore, the physical labor, the object, the artifact. Okay, maybe I am here to lament that a little.
I think part of what I’m trying to say about length is exemplified in the two albums y’alls faves just dropped. Though Certified Lover Boy and Donda are both mad long, Donda takes its time in a way that CLB just doesn’t. CLB takes up so much space even as it speeds through itself. I have come to hope for at least four good tracks from every Dr*ke album. So maybe he should stick to EPs. K*nye is an anachronism as much as he is a perfectionist. He can’t be a readymade product. He insists on making us wait, and then holding our attention for almost two hours.
I have a tendency toward longwindedness. Brevity was often, as you can see from the history of these shorter modes, a consequence of technology, of money, of necessity. But like I said, brevity has a place in my heart too. So long as its precise rather than rushed.
The last track on Cry Love is actually an instrumental mirror to the first— “Express Your Love Theme” which feels (forgive the corniness but I mean it) like driving at dusk with a dear friend. Apparently the two women who made up The Sweet and Innocent were in high school at the time, which explains the terrifying group name. Though many EPs were mere album samplers, there’s something about Cry Love being The Sweet and Innocents’ only project that differentiates it in a wonderful way. It doesn’t feel like gearing up for something else. There isn’t a moment of space wasted. Even at 13 mins, it takes its time too.