The Low Anthem
EVOLVING IN THE DARWINIAN MUSIC INDUSTRY
By Priyanka Boghani
“Here we are, millions of years after human evolution from monkeys, with our philosophies and values. We’re the ones who won all of those battles and still exist and are at the top of the pecking order,” muses Ben Miller. “I just wonder what it means to believe in something that doesn’t exist because it’s right but because it’s managed to propagate itself.” Talking about Darwin’s theory of evolution with The Low Anthem may require all your intellectual faculties. But listening to their newest album that showcases their thoughts and musings on Darwinism is a simple pleasure.
Ben Miller, Jeffrey Prystowsky and Jocie Adams, the twenty-somethings from Providence, R.I. who make up The Low Anthem, slogged away this past winter in an isolated cabin on Block Island to produce their latest work, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin. The album is a distinct result of their evolution in sound, featuring more band members, more instruments and more complex themes.
Like most band creation stories, Miller and Prystowsky met while attending Brown University and started playing music together. Their collaborations with various artists resulted in their first album, which they are reluctant to name. They lament the fact that it’s still “floating around on the internet” because they no longer stand behind their very first album.
Two years went by and the duo started playing professionally and collaborating with Dan Lefkowitz, a Virginian blues musician. “We immersed ourselves in the songwriting tradition and Americana. By the time we were making that record we had more of a rich place to come from,” says Miller. The result was their second album What the Crow Brings released in a limited quantity of lovingly crafted silk-screened CD sleeves. “We went from playing with cellists, violinists, tabla players and drummers to stripping it down with simpler arrangements and bringing out the song more,” says Miller of the band's transition.
Jocie Adams joined Miller and Prystowsky when she played recorder for their second album on one song. They joke, “there were nine shots of bourbon lined up for her and then we had all the recording equipment set up in the other room.” The collaboration worked beautifully and she was drafted into the band as another multi-instrumentalist.
The band also expanded their instrumental horizons on their latest album, “hacking around” on 27 different instruments including the zither, banjo, trombone, clarinet and e-flat horn. “We’re not excellent players of any of those 27 instruments,” Prystowsky clarifies. “We’ll learn how to play a trumpet if a song needs a trumpet part. We pride ourselves on being hard triers.” They write arrangements that they can perform live as a trio, but they cart around as many instruments as will fit in their car.
One aspect of songwriting that The Low Anthem takes very seriously is song arrangement. Though they write songs individually, they collaborate to arrange the songs musically. “[Arranging is] one of the most interesting things of what we do. Trying different tempos, different feels. We spend months, sometimes longer, with one song, trying it as different things,” says Prystowsky. “A rock song may start out as blues and end up as a folk song.” Their songs evolve along with the band from recording to live performance, with no sound remaining static for long.
Musical influences for The Low Anthem reach far and wide, around the world and into the past. Adams, a classical musician, was influenced by medieval music, Gustav Mahler and Harold Wright. She calls that era of music “the beginnings of music that we understand.” Prystowsky cites his musical influences as Charles Mingus and Willie Dixon, while his songwriting inspiration comes from the likes of Robert Johnson, Leonard Cohen and Woody Guthrie. Religious music such as Jewish chanting also holds a special fascination for him, because of the idea of music as prayer. Miller counts Bob Dylan, Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen as his biggest songwriting influences, along with performers Captain Beefheart, John Prine and Neil Young, “because he’s a hard trier, from the heart.”
With all these disparate influences, how does the creative process survive without the songs being pulled apart? Prystowsky insists that’s the best part, saying, “You need that conflict. If I didn’t have our band to bring these pieces to, I’d be monocolored. In my head, it’s just not as interesting.” That diversity and experimentation shows through in the album with songs ranging from the smooth, ethereal “Charlie Darwin” to the raucous “Home I’ll Never Be” to the brooding “Ticket Taker.” Borders between genres mean little when a band amasses so many influences, and yet the songs form a cohesive album, evoking images of theological calamities and man’s struggle to survive.
Despite a grueling ten day recording session when they barely slept, the album has a sleek finish, and though they didn’t fulfill their utopian vision of all the musicians giving “speeches about Darwinism, Christianity and the plight of man,” The Low Anthem pulled together a record to let the listener ponder those very same ideas. “To me, it has the same melodies and harmonies of gospel music in its application, not in its content,” says Miller.
As for survival as a band in this day and age, Prystowsky’s advice is to work hard, both on performance and on the business side. He says, “I know a friend of mine in New York who has a more typical band where no one does business work, no one knows how to deal with a newspaper or a club agent. [The mentality is] ‘I have great music and I’ll play in my room and people will come to me.’” Prystowsky urges bands to think like agents and writers. “It’s not a secret. There’s no magic. We worked our asses off to book that damn tour.” Miller adds that it’s a strange contradiction trying to be a musician and being business savvy. “It’s an interesting tension between the highest ideals of making art and making that art successful.”
What’s next for The Low Anthem? Their newest member, Cyrus Scofield, joined them in mid-August to kick off their tour. “By the time you’re used to something, it’s nice to evolve … we settled in as a trio and had this language we were used to but this new guy is going to come in and he’s going to bring a whole different spirit and vibe. We’re going to have to deal with that, integrating a new identity. I think it’s great to accept change as fast as you can cope with it.”
The Low Anthem’s previous album was praised by NPR and they will be appear in a Rolling Stone documentary about emerging artists called “Songs of Innocence.” So it seems The Low Anthem is poised to make it to the top of the food chain, without the bloodshed.
www.lowanthem.com
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