As our Best of 2016 lists by genre come to a close, we consider the shorter, more concise musical statements made by artists: EPs. While albums tend to get the most shine for musicians, EPs can have just the same kind of musical depth and excellence.
It was harder than ever to trim our list to 10 this year, but we've done it again. Find our list of 2016's best EPs below.
To see more of our year-end coverage, head over to our 2016 in Lists section.
Exclaim!'s Top 10 EPs of 2016:
10. Kedr Livanskiy
January Sun
(2MR)
In 2016, producer Kedr Livanskiy (real name Yana Kedrina) managed to rise up and out of Moscow's burgeoning yet still mostly obscure DIY electronic scene and find an international audience with her debut EP, January Sun.
Instilling a feeling of the alienation Kedrina experienced growing up, her minimal compositions modify track by track, leaving the listener disoriented. From the bubbling, woozy electro of "Razrushitelniy Krug" to the transformation from icy coldwave to blazing drum'n'bass on "Sgoraet," the EP somehow achieves coherence through her remarkable ambition to create something exceptional.
Cam Lindsay
9. Charlotte Cardin
Big Boy
(Cult Nation)
We've written a lot about Charlotte Cardin this year, and for good reason. This was the year that Cardin both slipped out from under her name-making turn on French reality singing show La Voix ("The Voice" in English) and broke outside of her home province of Quebec. Both are thanks to the jazz-tinged, slinky electro-ballads of her debut EP, Big Boy.
To those outside of la Belle Province who had no idea that La Voix existed — let alone that she starred on it — Cardin seemed to appear fully formed out of thin air, with strong singles like "Faufile," "Dirty Dirty" and, in particular, "Like It Doesn't Hurt," proving both her singing and songwriting bona fides. That Big Boy both transcends her past and rewrote her future is everything one could hope for from a debut EP; we can't wait to hear what she does next.
Stephen Carlick
8. Tiffany
I Just Wanna Dance
(S.M. Entertainment)
K-pop may not have made the international splash some industry experts predicted, but if one act came close, it was Girls' Generation. The real money now is actually on member Tiffany (real name Stephanie Hwang) to draw first blood, though. Her debut solo EP, I Just Wanna Dance, was just the record we needed in a year that failed to produce many dance-pop bangers.
Working with a number of rising songwriters and producers like GRADES (NAO), Melanie Fontana (Britney Spears, the Chainsmokers) and Nicola Roberts (Girls Aloud, Tinashe), Tiffany found a nice balance between her K-pop roots and her obvious American influences best realized on standout "Talk." That it reached Billboard's Heatseekers chart gives some hope that Tiffany's real shot at cracking North America is just around the corner.
Cam Lindsay
7. Majical Cloudz
Wait & See
(Arts & Crafts)
The sad demise of Montréal duo Majical Cloudz came with a silver lining in the form of five-song swansong EP Wait & See. All of the typical Cloudz pieces are here: soft, sombre, minimalist backing by Matthew Otto and Devon Welsh, paired with Welsh's yearning baritone and plainspoken, painfully (and beautifully) earnest lyrics.
Though Wait & See hardly breaks the mould of what we've come to expect from Majical Cloudz, it does, in a way, perfect it: songs like "Heaven" and the reversed synths of the title track are every bit as beguiling as the highlight of their excellent second LP, Are You Alone?, arresting in their musical simplicity and emotional depth.
Stephen Carlick
6. Lush
Blind Spot
(Edamame)
Lush's reunion barely lasted a year before the shoegaze legends ended their run. Thankfully, in that short time they were able to give us an EP that answered any questions pertaining to they'd sound like in 2016. With Blind Spot, Lush eschewed the straight indie pop of their swansong Lovelife, instead harkening back to the hypnotic, dreamy sounds of their earlier years.
Even with a more reverb-drenched, processed guitar sound, they remembered to give strong melodies to "Out of Control" and "Burnham Beeches," two of their finest songs ever. Four songs didn't feel like enough from Lush, but it's better to have than to have not, right?
Cam Lindsay
5. Amnesia Scanner
AS
(Young Turks)
The rise of Arca has made way for a plethora of young producers with a vision as cracked as it is beautiful, and Amnesia Scanner's AS EP suggests they're the most promising of them.
"Gardens Need Walls" is a flickering, appropriately head-spinning introduction — particularly on headphones — but it's on "Chingy" that the mysterious Berlin duo really demonstrate their abilities, turning what sounds like it might once have been a pop song into a jittery, broken-sounding dirge. In comes slamming, metallic-sounding percussion, but industrial music this isn't; the sounds are rusted over, being hauled back into existence here after years of disuse.
Mixing ambient, UK wonky, hip-hop and distortion-laden samples on songs like "Crust" and "Want It," Amnesia Scanner have created a blueprint for a new genre — and future masterpieces — with AS.
Stephen Carlick
4. Sheer Mag
III
(Wilsuns RC)
We featured Sheer Mag on this same list last year for II, and they're here again, for good reason: Nobody is making concise, peppy pop better than this Philadelphia outfit.
Though they record exclusively in tinny lo-fi, the guitar licks are tight and memorable, the band sharply shimmying this way and that through songs — like the Thin Lizzy-esque "Can't Stop Fighting" or crunchy "Nobody's Baby" — that never quite hit the four-minute mark. Their not-so-secret weapon is singer Tina Halladay, whose melodic rasp cuts through the din of their recordings to hit the listener with melodic hook after hook.
III grabs you by the collar, but when it lets you go 15 minutes later, you'll wipe the flecks of spit off your face and, if you're like us, start it all over again.
Stephen Carlick
3. Tony Molina
Confront the Truth
(Slumberland)
Bay Area maestro Tony Molina surprised many in 2013 with his debut album proper, Dissed and Dismissed, by cramming 12 tracks of chorus-free and crunchy power-pop nuggets into as many minutes. It took him a while, but this followup, the eight-track EP Confront the Truth, finally arrived with its own surprise.
Molina bypassed the distortion pedals and instead channelled the gentler side of his old band Ovens, as well as his love for the Beatles. The songs are mostly acoustic-based when they're not intentionally replicating the organs of "Strawberry Fields Forever," as he does on "I Don't Want to Know" and "Hung Up on the Dream." Sure, it's all fairly derivative, but as Molina proved with his Bandwagonesque licks on D&D, he's at his best when he mimics his heroes — and boy, does he ever do the Beatles well on Confront the Truth.
Cam Lindsay
2. Carly Rae Jepsen
E•MO•TION: Side B
(604/School Boy/Interscope)
While the world was still waiting for Carly Rae Jepsen to hit superstardom in the wake of her 2015 masterpiece, E•MO•TION, the BC native graced us with what was left over from that album's recording sessions.
Pop music is no stranger to repackaging albums with bonus tracks, but E•MO•TION: Side B arrived as a standalone with eight unreleased tracks. In interviews, Jepsen had glowed about the tracks that didn't make E•MO•TION, and now we know why: These songs weren't far removed from a prime cut; if E•MO•TION was the tenderloin, then Side B is the New York strip. While there isn't anything quite as splendiferous as the wailing sax that kicks off "Run Away with Me," Jepsen could have swapped in practically any of these songs without second-guessing.
Even with a list of collaborators that isn't quite as notable as before (Dev Hynes returns for a co-write credit on "Body Language"), it's hard to tell considering how well these songs resume the album's quixotic nature and synth-charged melodies and fizzy hooks.
Cam Lindsay
1. G.L.O.S.S.
Trans Day of Revenge
(Independent)
After earning a $50,000 record deal from Epitaph, Olympia, WA trans-feminist hardcore quintet G.L.O.S.S. (a.k.a. Girls Living Outside Society's Shit) called it quits, citing, among other things, that "Being in the mainstream media, where total strangers have a say in something we've created for other queer people, is exhausting."
So we'll just say this: the last seven minutes of music the band created, comprising the five songs of Trans Day of Revenge, were as righteously angry, powerful and galvanizing as music gets these days, and felt particularly necessary in an era where fear and hatred have taken unfathomable tolls on the world.
Thank you, G.L.O.S.S — don't give up the fight.
Stephen Carlick
It was harder than ever to trim our list to 10 this year, but we've done it again. Find our list of 2016's best EPs below.
To see more of our year-end coverage, head over to our 2016 in Lists section.
Exclaim!'s Top 10 EPs of 2016:
10. Kedr Livanskiy
January Sun
(2MR)
In 2016, producer Kedr Livanskiy (real name Yana Kedrina) managed to rise up and out of Moscow's burgeoning yet still mostly obscure DIY electronic scene and find an international audience with her debut EP, January Sun.
Instilling a feeling of the alienation Kedrina experienced growing up, her minimal compositions modify track by track, leaving the listener disoriented. From the bubbling, woozy electro of "Razrushitelniy Krug" to the transformation from icy coldwave to blazing drum'n'bass on "Sgoraet," the EP somehow achieves coherence through her remarkable ambition to create something exceptional.
Cam Lindsay
9. Charlotte Cardin
Big Boy
(Cult Nation)
We've written a lot about Charlotte Cardin this year, and for good reason. This was the year that Cardin both slipped out from under her name-making turn on French reality singing show La Voix ("The Voice" in English) and broke outside of her home province of Quebec. Both are thanks to the jazz-tinged, slinky electro-ballads of her debut EP, Big Boy.
To those outside of la Belle Province who had no idea that La Voix existed — let alone that she starred on it — Cardin seemed to appear fully formed out of thin air, with strong singles like "Faufile," "Dirty Dirty" and, in particular, "Like It Doesn't Hurt," proving both her singing and songwriting bona fides. That Big Boy both transcends her past and rewrote her future is everything one could hope for from a debut EP; we can't wait to hear what she does next.
Stephen Carlick
8. Tiffany
I Just Wanna Dance
(S.M. Entertainment)
K-pop may not have made the international splash some industry experts predicted, but if one act came close, it was Girls' Generation. The real money now is actually on member Tiffany (real name Stephanie Hwang) to draw first blood, though. Her debut solo EP, I Just Wanna Dance, was just the record we needed in a year that failed to produce many dance-pop bangers.
Working with a number of rising songwriters and producers like GRADES (NAO), Melanie Fontana (Britney Spears, the Chainsmokers) and Nicola Roberts (Girls Aloud, Tinashe), Tiffany found a nice balance between her K-pop roots and her obvious American influences best realized on standout "Talk." That it reached Billboard's Heatseekers chart gives some hope that Tiffany's real shot at cracking North America is just around the corner.
Cam Lindsay
7. Majical Cloudz
Wait & See
(Arts & Crafts)
The sad demise of Montréal duo Majical Cloudz came with a silver lining in the form of five-song swansong EP Wait & See. All of the typical Cloudz pieces are here: soft, sombre, minimalist backing by Matthew Otto and Devon Welsh, paired with Welsh's yearning baritone and plainspoken, painfully (and beautifully) earnest lyrics.
Though Wait & See hardly breaks the mould of what we've come to expect from Majical Cloudz, it does, in a way, perfect it: songs like "Heaven" and the reversed synths of the title track are every bit as beguiling as the highlight of their excellent second LP, Are You Alone?, arresting in their musical simplicity and emotional depth.
Stephen Carlick
6. Lush
Blind Spot
(Edamame)
Lush's reunion barely lasted a year before the shoegaze legends ended their run. Thankfully, in that short time they were able to give us an EP that answered any questions pertaining to they'd sound like in 2016. With Blind Spot, Lush eschewed the straight indie pop of their swansong Lovelife, instead harkening back to the hypnotic, dreamy sounds of their earlier years.
Even with a more reverb-drenched, processed guitar sound, they remembered to give strong melodies to "Out of Control" and "Burnham Beeches," two of their finest songs ever. Four songs didn't feel like enough from Lush, but it's better to have than to have not, right?
Cam Lindsay
5. Amnesia Scanner
AS
(Young Turks)
The rise of Arca has made way for a plethora of young producers with a vision as cracked as it is beautiful, and Amnesia Scanner's AS EP suggests they're the most promising of them.
"Gardens Need Walls" is a flickering, appropriately head-spinning introduction — particularly on headphones — but it's on "Chingy" that the mysterious Berlin duo really demonstrate their abilities, turning what sounds like it might once have been a pop song into a jittery, broken-sounding dirge. In comes slamming, metallic-sounding percussion, but industrial music this isn't; the sounds are rusted over, being hauled back into existence here after years of disuse.
Mixing ambient, UK wonky, hip-hop and distortion-laden samples on songs like "Crust" and "Want It," Amnesia Scanner have created a blueprint for a new genre — and future masterpieces — with AS.
Stephen Carlick
4. Sheer Mag
III
(Wilsuns RC)
We featured Sheer Mag on this same list last year for II, and they're here again, for good reason: Nobody is making concise, peppy pop better than this Philadelphia outfit.
Though they record exclusively in tinny lo-fi, the guitar licks are tight and memorable, the band sharply shimmying this way and that through songs — like the Thin Lizzy-esque "Can't Stop Fighting" or crunchy "Nobody's Baby" — that never quite hit the four-minute mark. Their not-so-secret weapon is singer Tina Halladay, whose melodic rasp cuts through the din of their recordings to hit the listener with melodic hook after hook.
III grabs you by the collar, but when it lets you go 15 minutes later, you'll wipe the flecks of spit off your face and, if you're like us, start it all over again.
Stephen Carlick
3. Tony Molina
Confront the Truth
(Slumberland)
Bay Area maestro Tony Molina surprised many in 2013 with his debut album proper, Dissed and Dismissed, by cramming 12 tracks of chorus-free and crunchy power-pop nuggets into as many minutes. It took him a while, but this followup, the eight-track EP Confront the Truth, finally arrived with its own surprise.
Molina bypassed the distortion pedals and instead channelled the gentler side of his old band Ovens, as well as his love for the Beatles. The songs are mostly acoustic-based when they're not intentionally replicating the organs of "Strawberry Fields Forever," as he does on "I Don't Want to Know" and "Hung Up on the Dream." Sure, it's all fairly derivative, but as Molina proved with his Bandwagonesque licks on D&D, he's at his best when he mimics his heroes — and boy, does he ever do the Beatles well on Confront the Truth.
Cam Lindsay
2. Carly Rae Jepsen
E•MO•TION: Side B
(604/School Boy/Interscope)
While the world was still waiting for Carly Rae Jepsen to hit superstardom in the wake of her 2015 masterpiece, E•MO•TION, the BC native graced us with what was left over from that album's recording sessions.
Pop music is no stranger to repackaging albums with bonus tracks, but E•MO•TION: Side B arrived as a standalone with eight unreleased tracks. In interviews, Jepsen had glowed about the tracks that didn't make E•MO•TION, and now we know why: These songs weren't far removed from a prime cut; if E•MO•TION was the tenderloin, then Side B is the New York strip. While there isn't anything quite as splendiferous as the wailing sax that kicks off "Run Away with Me," Jepsen could have swapped in practically any of these songs without second-guessing.
Even with a list of collaborators that isn't quite as notable as before (Dev Hynes returns for a co-write credit on "Body Language"), it's hard to tell considering how well these songs resume the album's quixotic nature and synth-charged melodies and fizzy hooks.
Cam Lindsay
1. G.L.O.S.S.
Trans Day of Revenge
(Independent)
After earning a $50,000 record deal from Epitaph, Olympia, WA trans-feminist hardcore quintet G.L.O.S.S. (a.k.a. Girls Living Outside Society's Shit) called it quits, citing, among other things, that "Being in the mainstream media, where total strangers have a say in something we've created for other queer people, is exhausting."
So we'll just say this: the last seven minutes of music the band created, comprising the five songs of Trans Day of Revenge, were as righteously angry, powerful and galvanizing as music gets these days, and felt particularly necessary in an era where fear and hatred have taken unfathomable tolls on the world.
Thank you, G.L.O.S.S — don't give up the fight.
Stephen Carlick