"Offshore" is the name of an Early Day Miners song. Offshore is the name of an Early Day Miners album. "Offshore" does not appear on Offshore, but Offshore used "Offshore", from 2001's Let Us Garlands Bring, as its inspiration. Offshore splits the eight-minute "Offshore" into a suite of three tracks-- "Return of the Native", "Silent Tents", and "Hymn Beneath the Palisades". Given all the fuss-- a 38-minute album drawn from an eight-minute song-- the original "Offshore" must be pretty remarkable, right?
Wrong. "Offshore" runs much like a multi-movement score for a short film about personal travails, writ large through a nature metaphor. The song's central image is a storm-swept New Orleans marsh-- "Her presence and her delta eyes/ Stained-glass misery"-- representing loneliness and despair. It's sinister, subdural post-rock that builds slowly, eventually rising through glistening strings before launching upward. At its peak, though, is an awkward, three-minute, monoriff-and-variation coda. "Offshore" has been a live Miners favorite for years, and one suspects that on stage it unravels, explodes even. But, on record, it's aggressively passive, a "big song" with epic intentions and minimal effects.
The problems with the album-length adaptation are as similar as they are immediate: Instrumental opener "Land of Pale Saints" feels a lot like treading water, frontman Daniel Burton and his big band (including members of Windsor for the Derby, Unwed Sailor, and On Fillmore) trudging along with one riff. Any variation is essentially rhythmic, save for one guitar that comes in late, out of phase and in another octave. It's one of the record's most interesting textures, but-- just when it starts to threaten the pattern-- it falls away, leaving the drums to march through ethereal, paint-by-pedals tones. The pop songs that follow are charming and intricate, like Broken Social Scene's most challenging pieces. But, by then, any momentum is nullified, and the doldrums barely stir the sea.
For Early Day Miners, this situation isn't unique: It's been the source of both their most listless and most winning moments, and it was the snag that kept Burton's former band, Ativin (also from Indiana, also on Secretly Canadian), so stale. Over four albums, Ativin became progressively better at finding the next level and retreating from it, stopping short of post-rock fireworks, always falling into a safety net of barely agitated affability. When Ativin got loud, as on 2004's "Scout", an awkward self-awareness made them cut their losses and mitigate the aggression.
It was as frustrating then as it is now. When Black Mountain's Amber Webber moans the lyrics of "Return of the Native"-- barely there above a bed of slow-trot drums, tremolo guitars, and mild distortion-- you want everyone to speak up about what is happening. But it moves in reverse, tip-toeing into "Silent Tents" and dissolving into a three-minute drone. Icy comfort, not hard-won redemption.
But it's not over: "Hymn Beneath the Palisades" slowly eclipses the drone and, finally, pummels it. Guitars and tom blasts suck the air from their surroundings. Maybe this is it, the moment when it all comes crashing forward, the release. But the band stiffens like lockjaw, serial repetition driving little but boredom home. As conclusions go, it's perfect. Unflinching, it refuses to move, the quintessential capitulation of an emotional post-rock album that allows no room for empathy, attachment or growth. Trouble is, one track's success is contingent on a matrix otherwise built on failure.
