3 out of 5

Produced by: Steve Heritage (engineer)

Label: Takehold Records

Twothirtyeight hold the distinction of clearly being an emo band while sidestepping all of the annoying trappings of that genre.  They even manage to have released on Tooth and Nail and not be annoying, which is an equally rare distinction.  (He judged, dismissively, glossing over the MxPx CDs he’d owned and sold.)

Arriving a couple years after their debut, Matter lacks the density of hooks found on swan song You Should Be Living, but the driving force of lead Chris Staples evidently gave the band a strong direction even at this early stage.  The disc admittedly cycles through its ideas over four or five songs out of its eight, but the sequencing shuffles that into roughly two halves so you can get through the whole EP of pleasantly hard-edged emo-pop before you start to sniff out the repetition of the quiet/loud song structure.

Meaty distortion is introduced early on, breaking into the pretty pluckings, and Staples tempers his pleading earnestness with an innate sense of patience; both of these elements are key in subverting the emo norms, as well as responsible for supporting those songs / moments where the group goes full-on precious, like the acoustic Suitcases For Always.  That’s not an absolute knock on those songs, rather a backhanded compliment that twothirtyeight had a good sense of how to balance their varying genre elements.

Overall, Matter suffers from being a tad undefined.  The songs are quality – even if a couple of them seem interchangeable – but the EP also captures the group on the cusp of really strengthening their sound and sharpening their message.