Product Reviews
While scoping out locations for their third album, the Low Anthem stumbled across a vacant pasta sauce factory in Central Falls, RI. For a band whose instruments include WWII-era pump organs and other antique items, the factory -- with its label-strewn floors, big empty spaces, and semi-crumbling appearance -- must ve felt like home. And it was home, at least for the three winter months in which the Low Anthem took up temporary residence inside the place, recording the bulk of their third album with Charlie Darwin producer Jesse Lauter. Smart Flesh, the result of the so-called Pasta Sauce Factory Sessions and an additional session in Providence, makes good use of the building, which often functions as a fifth member of the band. The songs are deliberately loose and minimalist -- intricacy tends to get lost in the booming, resonant halls of a factory -- but the substance that remains is strong, potent stuff. High-lonesome folk, bare-boned Americana, and old-timey harmony numbers are the name of the game, and although the band s use of vintage instruments makes for some fun Wikipedia sleuthing (what are crotales, anyway?), the spotlight remains on the songs themselves. Frontman Ben Knox Miller sings with a troubadour s voice, a combination of Bob Dylan and early James Taylor that lends a pleasantness to anything he sings, even when the lyrics revolve around death. He feels like the obvious leader here -- although everyone sings, he s the only member to own the frontman role -- but Smart Flesh s best songs are those that revolve around the band s four-part harmonies, including the gorgeous Love and Altar (a close cousin to Oh My God, Charlie Darwin s title track) and a cover of George Carter s Ghost Woman Blues. The Low Anthem may be Ivy League grads, but Smart Flesh doesn t feel like the work of overeducated Generation Y kids thumbing through their parents folk LPs -- it feels like the real thing. ~ Andrew Leahey, Rovi
Product Notes
With its dreamy, rustic take on the idea of Americana, the Low Anthem's 2011 album builds on the promise of the group's universally praised 2008 debut, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin. The group self-produced Smart Flesh, bringing in Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes, Monsters of Folk, M. Ward) to mix the Pasta Sauce sessions and Jesse Lauter (Elvis Perkins, April Smith) to engineer. Instrumentation included jaw harp, musical saw, stylophone, oversized drum kits, and three antique pump organs that the band had found and restored. The exquisitely crafted, achingly spare arrangements at times recall the early recordings of Leonard Cohen, and Miller's voice, on a track like "Burn," displays a similarly gruff yet plaintive timbre. The deeply melancholic mood the group favors, starting with a spellbindingly slow-motion rendering of George Carter's 1920's era "Ghost Woman Blues," will appeal to fans of the backwoods musings of Bon Iver or the lovelorn southern balladry of the Avett Brothers, with whom The Low Anthem has toured.