"Thank Heaven for little girls," goes the song. And while I'm not going to fully embrace the lifestyle advocated by the lyricist, I appreciate the wider sentiment. These days, when albums are 70-minute click-and-cut operas about discombobulated suburban kids, I welcome little EPs such as Phil Crumar's As It Goes.

The last time I had enough patience to sit down and fully absorb 70-minute albums was when I was supposed to be studying for my college finals. When not listening to the teacake and Glenfiddich radio commentaries on the England cricket test matches, I would slope back on my unmade bed and zone out into the time-wasting paradises of New Order's Technique and the Happy Mondays' Bummed.

So a 13-minute EP of top-notch slacker funk slots frictionlessly into my horribly hectic schedule. Phil Crumar packs a mound of stuff into a small packet of time-- the kind of stuff bongwatered head-bobbers always promise to deliver, but get too caught up in the weed-and-Doritos cycle of their padded lives.

As It Goes comes on, to the lazy, like a less self-conscious Beck. But rather than using strings of Dada-esque phrases and expecting the rest of us to be astounded by his ability to generate meaningless drivel, Crumar stands with Bristol know-it-alls, Day One, effortlessly resurrecting images of the urban street corner invoked on Ordinary Man. And along with a full complement of dope beats (not of the Swizz or Timberland hue, mind), Crumar spackles his tunes with pedal steel guitar. The instrument's thin, serene tones perfectly contrast with his scuffed shoe rhymes.

Crumar, whose bespectacled, closet intellectual self adorns the cover art, tries to fob us off with the idea that his life centers around quaffing coke, munching on Fritos, and honing his "Tetris" skills. He lies! But it is a delicious fib-- as delicious as the fringe instrumentation throughout these four tracks. Crumar is joined on As It Goes by nimble-tongued Brett Abramson, whose appearances on "Cornerstone" and the title track serve as a bathetic counterpoint to Crumar's ironically puffed-up, unmistakably desultory cogitations.

Crumar, whose move from the Go-Go houses of D.C. to the temperate nonchalance of San Francisco has given him an askance, erudite take on slacker rap. Crumar isn't just rolling with this stuff "as it goes"-- he's without fear of contradiction, totally in control, and reaping the very real rewards of being on top of his game. Let's hope we don't have to wait for his friends to sup down the bongwater for him to throw down the full-length.

-Paul Cooper