The Low Anthem has, in three quick years, become standard bearers for a resurgent folk music movement. Their current tour, behind their new album Smart Flesh, takes in several churches in addition to Boston’s cavernous Old South Church, and the choice of venues says a lot about the Anthem’s music: unapologetically traditional, unabashedly beautiful, unmistakably idiosyncratic. What other band can gather round a single microphone for an a cappella singalong, transition to an arrangement relying on clarinet and singing saw, and then torch the place with a Tom Waits cover? (Well, besides Tom Waits, then).
In the hushed and lofty expanse of Old South Church, the moments of grouped close harmonies on songs like “Love And Altar” were bewitchingly lovely, every little strum fluttering through the air. Ben Knox Miller, lead singer of the quartet, took in the crucifix, pews and stained glass and deadpanned, “Just another rock club – reminds me of that bar downtown, Paradise.” What it really reminded him of, it turns out, was the great hollowness of the retired pasta factory in Rhode Island where the band recorded Smart Flesh, where every note takes on an echoing life of its own.
For “This Goddamn House,” off the band’s first album What The Crow Brings, Miller tersely instructed the audience to pull out their cellphones and call the person next to them. Uncertain, and perhaps a little suspicious, we did so, one by one, at least one phone going off in the middle of the song. The effect was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced, and may or may not have been what was intended: a reverberating, diffused wash of whistly chittering, “like crickets! But not really crickets!” as one enchanted listener exclaimed.
The church’s acoustics did the band fewer favors when, in the middle of their set, they broke out their more raucous numbers (“Boeing 737,” “Hey All You Hippies”). The sound was clattering and smeared, presumably because the band were making do without a soundcheck, having been held up at the Canadian border earlier that day. Still plenty of highlights, though, including the otherwise-demure Jocie Adams smoking a verse of “Home I’ll Never Be,” and the way the big Jeff Prystowsky sets his crash up so that he has to stretch for it at the outer reaches of his kit whenever he feels the urge.
But the highlights were the softer stretches – the wordy, heavy title track off Smart Flesh, the gorgeously uneasy “Ghost Woman Blues.” When the band returned a standing ovation with an encore, they gathered together around the central mic one more time to deliver the haunting “To Ohio.” Led by Miller’s improbable falsetto, we would have followed anywhere.
Check out photos of opener BOBBY here.
