The Best in Order of Preference

1. “Late,” Florrie
2. “Super Ultra,” Charli XCX
3. “Cold Summer,” CJ Hilton
4. “Warrior,” Queen of Hearts
5. “Skitszo Pt. 1,” Colette Carr
6. “Iconic,” Icona Pop
7. “True,” Solange
8. “Cityswitch,” SRH
9. “Ghost,” Sky Ferreira
10. “Against the Wall,” Kat Graham

The release of an EP has become a rite of passage in pop music. It’s meant to mark an artist’s readiness for greater things, while defining how that artist wants to be seen by his or her public.

In the pre-download days, the music industry didn’t have much use for EPs. They were neither here nor there. It must not have seemed worth it—all the paper, plastic and aluminum it took to convert five castoff tracks into a marketable product.

But EPs have now been embraced by the demoralized, declining music industry, precisely because the format is flyover country. There’s no recognized history of past success, no tradition associated with EPs. Failures go unnoticed amid that flat terrain.

Many of the artists who made notable EPs in 2012 probably won’t become pop superstars. But they were successful in this particular year, in this particular format, because unlike major-label moneymakers and TV talent show contestants, the recordings were made to justify their claim on an audience’s attention and did so, even if just for the length of a few tracks.

Stuck neither here nor there, they devised a destination for themselves and went there. And it turned out to be somewhere worth going. To me, that’s pop.

Florrie.

‘LATE,’ FLORRIE
“Late” is Florrie’s third and final EP before her major-label debut, expected to drop sometime this year. All three were produced by Xenomania, the British pop production outfit where Florrie was once house drummer.

She has also been a model, and there is something of a runway attitude about these four tracks. Even more than in “Introduction” and “Experiments,” the first two Florrie EPs, the songs here march out fiercely to meet you.

“Late” goes way beyond ambition, aesthetic and commercial. These songs are so focused and tightly wound they suggest that, for Florrie and her collaborators, the pursuit of pop perfection has become an idée fixe.

Indulging Xenomania’s famous penchant for toying with song structure, Florrie builds ecstatic melodies out of chants that initially seem lightweight (e.g., “I shot him down-down-down-down-down-down,” “You gotta earn every inch of my body, babe”).

But if the songs on “Late” have a common “theme,” it’s that Xenomania’s pop vision—which Florrie incarnates—is not to be trifled with. The polish and sharpness of this sophisticated EP render totally irrelevant the question of how seriously we’re meant to take it.

That’s because Florrie and Xenomania prize sincerity over seriousness. The final track, “To the End,” clarifies the sense of moral purpose behind their embrace of what’s commonly labeled disreputable. Florrie calms the culture’s Fear of Music as she intones, “Who knows what the future holds? Better do what you’re told … I will only bring you happiness.”

Tracy Letts Takes on his Mentor Edward Albee in New Production

By Ben Kessler

Edward Albee’s classic Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? returns to Broadway in a 50th-anniversary production from Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company. Tracy Letts and Amy Morton will appear in the iconic roles of George and Martha, a middle-aged married couple locked in terminal, tragic combat on a New England college campus. Carrie Coon and Madison Dirks will play Honey and Nick, the catalytic younger couple whose own deep-seated “issues” are teased out and mirrored in the main conflict.

Letts, a seasoned stage actor, is perhaps best-known as the writer of the Tony Award-winning August: Osage County, which aimed for greatness (and, in the estimation of many critics, succeeded) by cranking the theme of American dysfunction—Albee’s ace—up to 11. Letts packed the stage with head cases, updating the conventions of naturalistic drama with reality-TV shamelessness.

For Letts, essaying George (an Everest of a role) may present an irresistible opportunity to illuminate the aspects of Albee’s play that galvanized and inspired him. But can the writer who unleashed the clamorousAugust: Osage County render in performance the delicate balance of irony and rue that makes George’s “Dies Irae/up yours” monologue in Act Two one of the American theatre’s most memorable? (I would be interested to see Steppenwolf alum John Malkovich give it a try.)

It’s obvious that Virginia Woolf’s scathing poetry has no place in the Kardashian era of lazily contrived reality-TV “drama.” Yet the play’s metatheatrics (Honey and Nick as onstage audience surrogates) speak to issues of spectatorship that, if anything, are more relevant now than they were in 1962. Against pop culture’s ongoing desensitization, Albee’s language and cunning structure still have the power—five decades later—to jolt us into being appalled, instead of entertained, by cruelty.

David Byrne mythifies Marcos in ‘Here Lies Love’

By Ben Kessler

The ambivalence provoked by women who wield power is reflected in the current photo-manipulation meme “Texts From Hillary,” in which a half-scowling secretary of state, peering dismissively down at her BlackBerry through sunglasses, fires scathing bits of digital wit at supplicants including Joe Biden, Mark Zuckerberg and President Obama himself. The catchiness of the meme is largely due to the fun of imagining Madame Secretary as an amalgam of bitch, badass and Internet joker; Hillary Clinton becomes the Nerf cudgel we use to vent our frustration at the ridiculousness of celebrity culture.

Here Lies Love, David Byrne and Fatboy Slim’s 2010 concept album/pop musical about Imelda Marcos, the infamous former first lady of the Philippines, could have been titled “Texts From Imelda.” The music evokes the ’70s disco Marcos is said to have loved, while the lyrics were largely drawn from and inspired by statements she made in interviews. In high postmodern style, avant-pop superstar Byrne uses these elements as texts in an attempt to explicate the Marcos myth.

To interpret the texts, co-producers Byrne and Fatboy Slim (aka Norman Cook) call upon more than 20 vocalists, all but two of whom are women, to perform story-songs recounting Marcos’ struggles, from childhood through her exile from the Philippines after a popular uprising.

Byrne’s stated goal was to blur the line between dance music and show tunes, a savvy and compassionate strategy given the subject matter. “Don’t You Agree?” (sung by Roisin Murphy), for example, reveals Marcos’ character like a Broadway diva’s aria but employs down-to-earth lounge-disco funkiness to nudge us a step or two down a slippery slope: “Sometimes you need a strong man/With things out of control/Don’t you agree?”

Here Lies Love’s pomo play with disco may seem mighty abstract to some, especially considering the grave crimes Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos were accused of, but it’s actually the source of much of the work’s substance and contemporary relevance. Byrne aligns Marcos’ fate with that of disco, the most maligned of pop music genres, cautioning us against stingy-hearted, racist reactions that have impeded understanding of both in recent history. Here Lies Love audaciously attempts to prompt an empathetic reinvestigation of history, as in the song “Why Don’t You Love Me?”: “Just look at Nixon/They tore him apart/How could you be so hard?”

To read the full article at CityArts click here.