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Few bands are as vocally lush and musically earnest as Providence’s The Low Anthem. The folk quartet adorned Portland’s Doug Fir Lounge with a powerful combination of grace and grit this past Friday night. While “folk” may be the most apropos moniker for what The Low Anthem creates, the band is magnificently unique in the way members shuffle between instruments. All four members are adept at navigating the singing saw, a strange xylophone hybrid, pump organ, stand-up bass, hollow body guitar, banjo, clarinet, and brass. The unit radiated a passionate intensity with every plucked string and nimbly created exceptional warmth that few bands can muster.
Opening the show with “Ticket Taker” from their 2009 album Oh My God Charlie Darwin, Ben Knox Miller’s exquisitely weary vocals immediately took center stage. By the time the band joined in with harmonic convergence shivers shook through the audience. Harmonies echoed off what appeared to be a magical, triangular microphone at the stage center. Huddled around the microphone precipitated paying customers to fall into a hypnotic trance during the Charlie Darwin title track. Transfixed as if transported into the vast, stark beauty of oceanic disillusionment reflected in the song’s lyrics, the audience burst into vibrant hollers upon the song’s conclusion.
The majority of the set consisted of song’s form the band’s brand new release Smart Flesh including the rousing “Hey All You Hippies”, seemingly an ode to the lovelorn and nostalgic spirit pervading the band’s sensibility. Lyrically the band references “Ghosts who Write History Books”, train travel, Gatling guns, and all manner of antediluvian nods that combined with their overwhelmingly organic instrumentation and tranquilly potent presence served to make the concert feel as if it was occurring in 1911 rather than this century.
The Low Anthem has slowly burned their way toward national prominence since forming in 2006 at Brown University including a massive rave in a recent Sunday New York Times. Hopefully added attention will only serve to draw this band of brothers and sisters deeper into their heart space where contemporary music seems to barely register. By celebrating a bygone era when every single note carries the weight of the world and is played from a deep longing to make sense of being human the band stands tall in a disorienting and rushed musical landscape. Displaying a knack for both a ragged and barnstorming growl in “Home I’ll Never Be” and meticulous four part harmonies in their cover of Johnny Cash’s “Bird on a Wire” it is evident this bunch has something special to treasure.
