Send "Early Day Miners " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 The first thing you notice about The Treatment, the sixth album from Bloomington, Indiana's Early Day Miners, is the relative lack of sonic cobwebs-- a bit unexpected from a band with a reputation for being shoegaze and slowcore revivalists. The percussion here is crisp, the tempos insistent-- even peppy at times-- and the guitar is slightly hazy but hardly dreamy. "In the Fire" and the Madchester echo of "How to Fall" are a far cry from musical wallpaper, and the band rarely embraces atmosphere for atmosphere's sake.The second thing you notice is that, for a band's sixth album (more, if you include Daniel Burton's parallel work in the instrumental Ativin), the disc doesn't sound like the latest endpoint in a gradual evolution as much as a new beginning, and this fresh-start theory makes some sense. The Treatment introduces Early Day Miners' latest lineup change, and with it has come a conscious shift in direction. Gone are the open-ended moodscapes and reverb excursions, making room for a newfound economy and an ear for greater accessibility. The Treatment's various studio effects are sympathetic to the songs rather than an end unto themselves. Daun Fields' backing vocals constitute perhaps the best effect of all. At the same time, the group doesn't always have a clear destination in mind. "The Surface of Things" and "Spaces" start off so cool, it's disappointing how static the tracks remain. What's missing is the kind of payoff songs like "So Slowly" or (the admittedly long and dreamy) "Becloud", to name two highlights, deserve. They glide along on cool basslines or swing with the weight of epic import, but fail to build up any melodic or emotional inertia to lend them greater force....full text |
| Popmatters |
| The first time I heard Early Day Miners was at a Wilco show in 2005. They were the opening act and, as my ears soon discovered, largely incomparable to the alt-country and rock sound that Jeff Tweedy et al perform. It was clear to me that—even there in the balcony seats with my neck strained and angled awkwardly toward the stage—Early Day Miners were cut from some variation of the shoegaze mold, using layered vocals and majestic repetition to create a wistful landscape of sound. If you’ll indulge me in a Hot Topic-style mashup description, think of Red House Painters reined in by the folky melodies of the Great Lake Swimmers and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what the Miners are like. Notice, too, the nominal template of adjective/noun/profession of these three bands, and suddenly the similarities seem much more than coincidental. For The Treatment, their sixth album since their 2001 debut, Early Day Miners have continued the tradition of long, sweeping tracks that paint the air with meditative descriptions of life’s many temperaments, with the addition of more germane social topics. But make no mistake: this is not an unpleasant trip down melancholy lane with dead trees and crumpled Dear John letters lining the curb. This is an exploration of life’s sometimes tragic themes that works toward an ultimate goal of acceptance, betterment, and change. With no reservation, I can say that Early Day Miners are successful in that aim....full text |
| Nuvo |
| It’s a rare album that saves the best for the last two minutes. Maybe that makes for a somewhat flawed album as well, but I’ll take the two-minute closing track to the Early Day Miners’ The Treatment — “Silver Oath” — in whatever way it’s packaged. It’s consistent with the sound of the record, which evokes the ringing clarity and cleanness of Death Cab for Cutie and Modest Mouse, with hints of the repetition, slowness and empty-plain echoes of Low and Cowboy Junkies. But “Silver Oath” adds an Appalachian spookiness to the mix, with Daun Fields’s forlorn guest vocals pushing the song — and the record — into more resonant, uncanny territory, and suggesting a place to go for the follow-up. Not that the rest of the album isn’t worth the listen, but it never crosses over into another world, never inspires a shiver, perhaps because it has such a clean poppy sound, and perhaps because its repetitive structure lends itself more towards mood music than anything that demands attention. Lyrics are unmemorable, choruses are absent or effaced, but the sound of the album is cool and pleasant, sounding about as much like, say, a Sting record (owing to soft synths and sweet vocals), as anything on Secretly Canadian possibly could. So it’s about the groove for a record that wouldn’t properly be called groove-based, a term more reserved for jam music and jazz. Bass and drums hold down the fort with unvarying beats, leaving the floor for guitar and synth to snake about, feedback here, an almost-too-beefy guitar solo here. The band does sound remarkably like early Modest Mouse at times, but without the manipulative emotional highs or lows; songs gradually build, but never climax, keeping things at an even keel throughout. When the band does step out of this mid-tempo, clean as a whistle, post-rock template on “Becloud” — which opens with a dirty, almost industrial drumbeat like Pink Floyd’s “Money” and which is darker and more distorted — the serene mood is broken, and we come into the light of day....full text |
Early Day Miners lyrics
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