It’s not my fault, it’s just my flaw
It’s who I am
You know it’s always been my heart
You know I always fall apart
I’m not really sure how I ended up with this five song EP from singer-songwriter Van Etten on my shelf. But it’s just kind of been there for years now and I never quite got around to pulling it down and giving it a spin, despite the fact that I like Van Etten quite a bit. Well, there was certainly no reason for me to wait this long. I’m on record as a guy who thinks a lot of albums are too long and also as a guy who thinks the EP format is its own particular art-form, so I was poised to like this, I suppose, but I ended up really loving it. The five songs here are just Van Etten in fine form, really sharp lyrically with an aesthetic that is sometimes folky, sometimes rocky and always pretty raw. I ended up just kind of letting the CD repeat after it went finished, listened through it a couple of times every time I listened to it. It’s a pretty emotionally dark set of songs, often hauntingly beautiful, but also pretty catchy. Van Etten’s just good at the craft of songwriting, I think, and this EP would function as a pretty good introduction to her, because, as far as I’m concerned, these aren’t in any sense “throwaways.” She hasn’t put together an EP of songs that just didn’t make the cut for a proper album; she’s crafted a short but beautiful little jewel of an EP, a bittersweet, emotionally vulnerable gem. 4 stars.
tl;dr – beautiful EP is more than just a collection of songs that didn’t make the cut for a “proper” album; vulnerable, beautiful, catchy, it’s a gem with an emotional depth that belies its length. 4 stars.