4 out of 5

Label: Expert Work Records

Produced by: Davis White (recorded by)

A concise, six-song punch of hardcore punk, members of young Dischord rockers Corm hop-skipped with some additional bandmates into a purposefully temporary act – appropriately named The Elusive – and dropped this EP. Gathered up by the fine folks at Expert Work Records (who also rereleased Corm) and remixed and remastered, Sometimes Sounds Collapse proves to be a really impressive set, energized by the short band runtime as opposed to being limited in scope as some type of side project – you can feel and hear a confidence of a group just kind of going for broke.

As such, there’s a refreshing lack of artifice to something stemming out of the occasionally too-heady DC punk scene, especially considering that some of these fellas would go on to the occasionally too-heady Q and Not U; this is much more rooted in Corm’s emo-tinged punk sound, but matured with some harsher edges, and more effective breakdowns, “bested” by Corm only in the sense that that group had a full album and more band history to work with, while The Elusive are boiling things down to six songs crafted over a summer.

That maturity means a lot, though. On both chronological sides of The Elusive, the bands I’ve named are very underlined by that emo tag in some way, whereas here, though fronted by Alex Ficker’s emo-nasal vocals, the song structures frequently shift away from the weightless riffing of that scene, combining some wall of noise of early Sunny Day or Jawbox with dialed in mathy leanings of Fugazi, a rock / punk cross-section that probably would’ve been hard to maintain over a full length, giving weight to the album title as well…

Remixed by J. Robbins himself and remastered by I’ve-mastered-500+-cool-records Dan Coutant, you can also just revel in the fidelity of this thing.