There’s a moment, about thirty seconds into “Howl”, the opening track on Evan de Roeper’s May: 21–26, where you realize you’re not just listening to music; you’re eavesdropping on something intensely private. It’s that soft-spoken, hard-hitting emotional espionage that defines the whole EP. Evan doesn’t so much perform these songs as he disassembles himself in real-time and dares you to keep listening.
Released the day after his 27th birthday, May: 21–26 isn’t just an EP; it’s more like a week in the life, archived in foley, static, and the kind of reverb-drenched self-reflection that would make even the most stoic therapist need a minute. It’s raw, it’s strange, and somehow it makes vulnerability feel like a flex.
Let’s talk about the production, because Evan sure did. He doesn’t just include foley sounds for atmosphere; he weaponizes them. There are footsteps, whispered breaths, clinking noises you’re not sure are keys or nerves, all stitched into the songs like a heartbeat you didn’t know you needed to hear. It’s not subtle, but it’s not gimmicky either. It’s textured. It’s intimate. It’s the sound of someone choosing honesty over aesthetics and somehow still landing both.
Track highlights include “Howl”, which runs with all the theatrical restraint of a candle slowly burning through a letter you never sent. The track doesn’t build so much as hover, soaked in melancholy but not paralyzed by it. It sets the tone perfectly: this is not music for escapism; it’s music for sitting in your feelings until they either leave or learn to pay rent.
“Haste” is where the EP starts moving, albeit like someone trying to run in a dream. The tempo picks up, but it still feels disoriented in the best possible way; there’s urgency without clarity. It’s anxious, but not panicked. Imagine if anxiety had a lo-fi hip-hop playlist, and it just found a track it could finally cry to.
Then we hit “Ground Zero,” which is less a song and more an emotional sinkhole. It’s the EP’s heavy hitter; not because it’s loud (it’s not), but because it carries the quiet weight of personal collapse. The production here is gorgeous in a kind of low-light, velvet-curtain, slow-bleed way. The vocals feel half-buried, like Evan is trying to protect you from what he’s saying even as he’s saying it. It’s the musical equivalent of staring into the middle distance for just a beat too long.
Throughout the EP, there’s this tension between being heard and being understood. Evan isn’t writing choruses for mass singalongs. Rather, he’s building sonic diaries that you accidentally find under the bed. There’s an intentionality to the restraint, as though the songs know that going for a higher peak would break the spell. And the spell is the point.
What’s genuinely refreshing here is the refusal to perform resilience. So much of independent music, especially in the post-streaming age, seems obsessed with wrapping vulnerability in marketable optimism. Evan doesn’t bother. May: 21–26 doesn’t try to comfort you. It tries to level with you. It’s music made by someone who’s not done figuring things out, and thank God for that.
As for the structure, the EP doesn’t build to a cathartic explosion or a feel-good resolution. There’s no grand finale. It ends the same way it lives: quietly, honestly, and slightly off-kilter. It’s an open door, not a closed book.
And maybe that’s what makes May: 21–26 kind of brilliant. In a world where every artist is trying to go viral or reinvent the genre wheel, Evan de Roeper made something that just… feels. It’s messy. It’s fragile. It’s a little awkward at times. But so is being a person.
May: 21–26 by Evan de Roeper isn’t here to save you, and it’s not pretending it can. It’s here to sit with you in the mess. And honestly? That’s more comforting than any triumphant hook ever could be.
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About the Author
A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for various publications around the world, the former lead writer of review blogspace Atop The Treehouse and content creator for Manila Bulletin.
