3 out of 5

Label: Expert Work Records

Produced by: Bryan Parker (recorded by)

Described as a “lost companion EP” to lost album The Unbearable Tightness of Being, it follows that this single-sided, 12-minute song would have similar ups and downs to that full length, though without other songs to prop this single one up, I have less to directly praise. …Because direct praise wasn’t exactly the equation on Tightness, either, rather noting that the band did a composite of various 90s / 00s hardcore punk / emo punk shticks extremely well, with the sequencing of that disc bouncing as efficiently through styles. Here, a couple different formats get boiled into one song, and it feels a bit pointless as a result. Not bad – still pretty expertly effected – but pointless in the sense that I can’t tell why this needed to be twelve minutes, except that the group wanted one track to work out an extended June of 44 dirge, and maybe didn’t want to figure out what to cut from the full length to pack this track in.

There’s part of the ‘sounds-like’ take for the song: it’s 12-minutes is partially a long lead in of muted riffage. The back half keeps with some early Blood Brothers-isms with its screamo template, but gets emo-ier as it calms down, transitioning into something akin to that first meWithoutYou album.

I like both of those bands. I like June of 44. Sweetheart’s one-song tribute – The Process Of Making Us Well – doesn’t necessarily stitch all their sounds together in any new way that necessarily justifies its standalone release, but if we replace “companion EP” with “B-side”, I can see it making sense in that context, and could’ve been a more effective slowburn with that kind of buildup.