The four-track EP was the sovereign format for shoegazers, which in retrospect, was a canny move – sometimes, they didn’t have quite enough ideas to stretch across an entire album. That wasn’t a problem for Ride in their imperial phase, mind you; their recently reissued first two albums, Nowhere and Going Blank Again, sound even better now, if anything. But there’s something to be said for charting this Oxford quartet’s early career through their EPs, from the self-titled debut, where the pop smarts of “Chelsea Girl” meet the sluggish Dinosaur thud of “Drive Blind” and “Close My Eyes,” through Play’s kaleidoscopic energy – on “Furthest Sense” and “Perfect Time,” Ride play like they’re careening off a rollercoaster track – to Fall, where they get expansive, on mock epics “Dreams Burn Down” and “Nowhere.” 1991’s Today Forever is consolidation, its strangely opaque production giving the material an appealing blankness and airiness – they were rarely as light-footed as on “Sennen” and “Beneath.”