Concept albums are not a thing of the past! Although they are widely considered to be a spontaneous but temporary fascination of the 1970’s, in reality concept albums have survived into the 21st century music business. Sure, the ‘70’s may have seen the peak of the release of concept albums with records like Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall, Genesis’ The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, and David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, but consider one of the top selling albums of 2004: American Idiot. The CD, by punk rock trio Green Day, is without a doubt a concept album (it follows the story of a troubled youth who moves into a city, falls in love, and becomes a villain) and it sold 3,840,000 copies in that year alone, only to go on to sell more copies in 2005 when it was the fourth most purchased CD.
Okay, so we have established that concept albums are still influential today… but how about concept EPs? Has anyone even heard of a concept EP? Okay… has anyone heard of EPs? EP stands for Extended Play and is the word used for CDs or records that are not short enough to be a single (which usually consist of ten minutes of music) but not long enough to be considered an album (anywhere from thirty to eighty minutes). Usually, EPs have ten to twenty-eight minutes of music on them, and a concept EP would try to explore a theme within that limited time. Sound hard? Well, Jon Foreman definitely knows how to do it, and he showed us how through his four concept EPs released every season since last fall, aptly named, Fall, Winter, Spring, and Summer.
Jon Foreman, more commonly known for his involvement with his San Diego alternative rock band, Switchfoot, undertook this mission of releasing an EP every season when his wife told him that she would like him to make a CD of worship songs. At first he thought he would simply cover already existing contemporary Christian music, but evidently Mrs. Foreman was dissatisfied with that idea and so he started writing his own. If that weren’t enough, Jon Foreman decided to give each set of six songs a seasonal theme. Apparently Foreman really loves his wife because these four EPs are perhaps the best collection of subtly beautiful acoustic songs.
In the upcoming weeks I will publish my cross-examinations of each EP (starting with Fall next week), complete with song-by-song reviews. Come back next week to see how Foreman successfully and creatively captures the sights, sounds, and smells of autumn through his acoustic guitar, piano, signature voice, and masterfully carved lyrics on Fall.