Back to the land
Published in Metroland, 3/10/11
Words, photos and video by Jeremy D. Goodwin
NORTH ADAMS—Who else is doing this? Though there’s indeed a fashionable subset of indie rockers who’ve traded in their skinny jeans for overalls, their mesh trucker hats for a hearty, back-to-the-land bumpkin chic, it’s actually a shame that The Low Anthem could accidentally be misfiled under this heading. No one else sounds like this band. And when you consider the hat and vest worn by one its members that is fashioned from a burlap sack, no one else looks like them either.
The cynical observer considers factors like the band’s pedigree (its two founding members met on the hardscrabble grounds of Brown University) and the various floppy farmer hats and fashionable mustaches employed at different times, and searches for a way to poke holes through the façade, to dismiss it as a pose. But none of the reflexive objections stick. The band is DIY right down to its hand-letterpressed CD covers and t-shirts individually screened at the show. But most importantly, you just can’t deflect the power of music this good.
Throughout the band’s revelatory, 100-minute performance at North Adam’s MASS MoCA on Saturday, not a moment felt affected. The sublime blend of sounds achieved by the quartet’s extensive stock of vintage instruments—from pump organ to musical saw, clarinets to jaw harp—felt as light as a growing shadow and as heavy as history itself. It is old and new and strange and eerie, of no place in particular but perhaps summoned from some murky place in our collective unconscious.
NORTH ADAMS—Who else is doing this? Though there’s indeed a fashionable subset of indie rockers who’ve traded in their skinny jeans for overalls, their mesh trucker hats for a hearty, back-to-the-land bumpkin chic, it’s actually a shame that The Low Anthem could accidentally be misfiled under this heading. No one else sounds like this band. And when you consider the hat and vest worn by one its members that is fashioned from a burlap sack, no one else looks like them either.
The cynical observer considers factors like the band’s pedigree (its two founding members met on the hardscrabble grounds of Brown University) and the various floppy farmer hats and fashionable mustaches employed at different times, and searches for a way to poke holes through the façade, to dismiss it as a pose. But none of the reflexive objections stick. The band is DIY right down to its hand-letterpressed CD covers and t-shirts individually screened at the show. But most importantly, you just can’t deflect the power of music this good.
Throughout the band’s revelatory, 100-minute performance at North Adam’s MASS MoCA on Saturday, not a moment felt affected. The sublime blend of sounds achieved by the quartet’s extensive stock of vintage instruments—from pump organ to musical saw, clarinets to jaw harp—felt as light as a growing shadow and as heavy as history itself. It is old and new and strange and eerie, of no place in particular but perhaps summoned from some murky place in our collective unconscious.
The Low Anthem, "Burn"
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“Burn,” from the band’s recently released third LP, creaked
open on the strength of Ben Knox Miller’s quiet vocals and tip-toeing banjo,
Mat Davidson’s understated electric bass, Jocie Adams’ haunting accents on the
hammered dulcimer, and the spine-shivering, eerie squeal conjured by occasional
guest Graham Harlan Smith from a saw. When Jeff Prystowsky’s hard-struck drums
kicked in to propel but not overpower,
it was clear that these songs can fly upon the slightest breeze, quietly
accelerating until they leave the ground to soar so close to the earth.
The band’s signature sound was most evocatively conjured on songs like this and “To The Ghosts Who Write History Books,” the latter featuring chilling lines from Adams on clarinet (her primary instrument), Miller’s bed of dreamy haze on pump organ, and a confident, sinewy acoustic bassline from Prystowsky. The addition of Davidson’s musical saw, absent from the song’s studio incarnation on breakthrough 2009 album Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, felt so appropriate as to be self-evident. The aural balance is remarkable; the sound has just enough heft to truly transport, but never feels fragile.
The band’s signature sound was most evocatively conjured on songs like this and “To The Ghosts Who Write History Books,” the latter featuring chilling lines from Adams on clarinet (her primary instrument), Miller’s bed of dreamy haze on pump organ, and a confident, sinewy acoustic bassline from Prystowsky. The addition of Davidson’s musical saw, absent from the song’s studio incarnation on breakthrough 2009 album Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, felt so appropriate as to be self-evident. The aural balance is remarkable; the sound has just enough heft to truly transport, but never feels fragile.
The Low Anthem has been piecing this sound together for a
few years, with Adams’ key contributions added only in time to appear on one
track of the group’s debut longplayer in late 2007, and Davidson rounding the seemingly
fully formed group into a quartet during its extensive touring of 2009.
(Original member Dan Lefkowitz departed early in the band’s history, and has
just recently re-emerged on the scene; he opened the show with a set of emotionally
committed, coffeehouse-brewed laments, including the wordplay-infused “The
Battle Hymn of the Hopeless Liberal.”)
When the tempo and volume increased for a barnhouse stomp through Rev. Gary Davis’ “Sally, Where’d You Get Your Liquor From?” it was still like a quiet scream, a balance between the need to shake up the pace and a desire to stay firmly rooted in the pervasive sense of shivering daydream. “The Snake and the Lightning Rod” ventured closer to country rock, but surged with ramshackle momentum, making it clear that The Low Anthem is getting closer and closer to forging a more rocking element to its sound that maintains the distinctive poetry of its more frequent, quiet spaces.
When the tempo and volume increased for a barnhouse stomp through Rev. Gary Davis’ “Sally, Where’d You Get Your Liquor From?” it was still like a quiet scream, a balance between the need to shake up the pace and a desire to stay firmly rooted in the pervasive sense of shivering daydream. “The Snake and the Lightning Rod” ventured closer to country rock, but surged with ramshackle momentum, making it clear that The Low Anthem is getting closer and closer to forging a more rocking element to its sound that maintains the distinctive poetry of its more frequent, quiet spaces.
As if testing this expansion through a controlled
experiment, the quartet returned for an encore with a second take on “Home I’ll
Never Be,” a song with lyrics by Jack Kerouac and music by Tom Waits that appeared
earlier in the night in its usual guise as a ragged, up-tempo rave-up. That
arrangement has become a rusty warhorse in the band’s live set, but the
stripped-down encore version, with the band grouped around a single vocal mic
at the stage lip, was a revelation. The
song transformed from defiant proclamation to road-weary, death-haunted lament,
becoming richer and more affecting in the process.
The night closed with an almost unbearably gorgeous take on “Charlie Darwin,” underpinned by Knox’s elastic falsetto. “Oh my god, the water’s cold and formless,” he sang, evoking a nagging fear drifting out from some dark crag in the American nightmare. It’s not light entertainment, but it’s too great to ignore. Mustaches notwithstanding.
The night closed with an almost unbearably gorgeous take on “Charlie Darwin,” underpinned by Knox’s elastic falsetto. “Oh my god, the water’s cold and formless,” he sang, evoking a nagging fear drifting out from some dark crag in the American nightmare. It’s not light entertainment, but it’s too great to ignore. Mustaches notwithstanding.
