SXSW: The Low Anthem

Symphony for a cellphone? It's obviously an idea whose time has come--it's just a bit surprising that it comes from a band that works hard at sounding like their music pre-dates electricity.

The Low Anthem leader Ben Knox Miller instructed the audience in the pews of St. David's on Friday (3/19) to use their cell phones to call the person seated next to them near the end of the tune he was unveiling, "This Goddamn House." The song is slow and full of the mundane observations that distinguish the lyrics of Tom Waits and John Prine--it's the afternoon, the newspaper is three days old--and the instrumentation of two clarinets and organ suggests the protagonists are senior citizens getting through their day. It was unclear what would occur with the dialing--Miller had two phones, too, held to a microphone--and after the calls went through the room filled with an unexpected sound, especially considering the song's subject matter. Chirping. Not quite birds or bugs, but more natural than anyone would think.

The moment was considerably touching. Uncomfortable laughs were let out; one woman's uncontrolled sounds were split 50/50 between laughing and crying; participation created a palpable tension in the audience that, for the most p[art, was willing to go along with this experiment as long as needed. A unique moment and a sign that that the group's second album could have stark differences from their Nonesuch debut.

The Low Anthem, whose "Oh My God, Charlie Darwin" was placed in the upper reaches of countless best of '09 lists, is about to start their first US headlining tour, having completed the recording of 30 new songs. They still have to mix the new tunes and figure out which ones will make the cut for the second Nonesuch disc.

Now a quartet, they spent six weeks in an abandoned spaghetti factory in their home city of Providence, RI. The new numbers reveal a continued interest in opening their audio spectrum beyond the autumnal tones of "Charlie Darwin" as Miller has started to mold his phrasing in the direction of early John Prine.

"There were a bunch of songs we felt were ready to go," Miller said before a Friday afternoon party performance. "Then we spent a week in the factory trying them again and again, figuring out how to record them. The live performance of a song and the recording are different mediums. Sometimes it's the other way around--you learn the best way to play a song for a record and then you have to translate that (for the stage) so you go back to the studio and do it again."

That includes Jocie Adams tasking a bow to small metal cymbals and Jeffrey Prystowsky moving between regal organ sounds and rambunctious drumming. It's the fearlessness Miller displays when pushing his voice into a Rick Danko-esque falsetto, trusting that quiet numbers can penetrate as well as the loud ones and then letting the whole band rip through the gospel-rock of "The Horizon is a Beltway."

The Low Anthem's headlining tour, which started in February, ends April 23 in Portland, ME.