Album review: The Low Anthem’s ‘Smart Flesh’

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

It’s too bad the Foo Fighters already called an album ‘Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace,’ because that title perfectly describes the new effort by the Low Anthem. To record the follow-up to 2008’s buzz-building ‘Oh My God, Charlie Darwin,’ this Rhode Island-based folk-rock outfit set up shop in a former pasta-sauce factory outside Providence; the group’s goal was to capture an explicitly handcrafted vibe not much in vogue in these days of Pro Tools and Auto-Tune.

Fortunately, what the Low Anthem accomplished neatly transcends such a conservative impulse: Excepting a couple of Arcade Fire-style stompers, ‘Smart Flesh’ is a gorgeous, inventively arranged set of reverb-rich roots ballads in which the music’s frayed edges add emotional weight, not who-cares credibility. Give hushed, slow-rolling songs like ‘I’ll Take Out Your Ashes’ and ‘Apothecary Love’ time to properly unspool and you’ll find yourself swept up in the band’s old-fashioned tales of romance and mortality. The soul-endangering threat of our current man-machine moment is unlikely to register.

-- Mikael Wood

The Low Anthem
‘Smart Flesh’
Nonesuch
Three and a half stars (Out of four)