Jefferson At Rest is Early Day Miners’ third album. They have drafted a new member into this album, singer Erin Houchin who sings with Daniel Burton on half the songs in a Low style. Early Day Miners used to be called Ativin and play instrumental post-rock but since they are called Early Day Miners, they explore the wide range of sadcore and slowcore style.

Early Day Miner’s sadcore fits with the atmosphere of dusty sunday afternoons when the sky is grey and the wind is sweeping the streets. The first four minutes, when your vacant stare hits the distance, the songs remain ordinary soothing song-writing, and then when you look at the thrash winding in the air, taken away by the wind, the music starts to evolve building up sluggish intensity (‘Awake’, ‘Into Pines’). ‘Wheeling’ opens the album in a sadcore style reminding one of Seam or Codeine (even though the song is far from being as sparse as Codeine’s songs) and it is endowed with nice entwined guitar and bass lines.

‘New Holland’ is a slowcore song à la Low: it is slow-moving and the male-female indolent voices singing the same lyrics give the impression that they hold each other’s hand and spend an empty day. ‘Mc Calla’ is slow-moving as well but not as touching because there is just one voice, which makes one think of Red House Painters. Some describe this kind of song-writing as hypnotic and others call it dull.

The last song entitled ‘Cotillon’ is a bit different in the sense that it conveys the impression that it just ceases being sad and scarcely starts to see a light at the end of a tunnel. This album smells wind and rain, storm and post-storm humidity, it evokes the lonely glass of white wine you like to swallow sip by sip on your own looking in the distance through your window when you’re down. After this last song, you might finish off your glass and think that after all that you might get to sleep easier than you thought tonight, for a change. But then, nothing’s for sure...

-SEB WOOd

/may 1st 2003/