The Low Anthem : Smart Flesh

<img src="http://www.qromag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/thelowanthemsmartflesh.jpg" alt="The Low Anthem : Smart Flesh" />The Low Anthem strip down to their <i>Smart Flesh</i>. ...
The Low Anthem : Smart Flesh
6.9 Bella Union
2011 

The Low Anthem : Smart Flesh The alt-folk/Americana revival of the past few years picked up pretty much every band under a certain age doing traditional American music – and you didn’t have to be that young in years to get lifted up in the wave, as the styles haven’t been known for their youthful performers in a long time, as many/most of the biggest names have been around since it all started back in the sixties and seventies.  Amongst those was The Low Anthem with 2008’s Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, that saw the Providence band go from picking up trash after the Newport Folk Music Festival to playing Newport (QRO Festival Guide).  Follow-up Smart Flesh sees the band strip down even further, to a sound that’s almost too folk.

Most listeners, upon first listen of Flesh, will immediately think of the king of sixties folk, the one-and-only Bob Dylan, and that’s both fair and unfair.  It’s hard to make modern American folk music and not sound like the ‘voice of a generation’ – but there are also certain songs where the Zimmerman truly shines through, such as the vocals & kiss-off attitude to "Hey, All You Hippies!", or in the revival anthem for 9/11, "Boeing 737".

But look past that and a little deeper, and the stripped, unaged nature of The Low Anthem comes to the fore.  Nearly every song sees the band the four multi-instrumentalists ensemble reduce themselves to one main instrument and vocals (or, in the case of natural woodwind instrumental "Wire", just the instrument).  There’s the organ-like sound to "Matter of Time", pluck of "I’ll Take Out Your Ashes", and harmony in "Love and Alter".  Each piece has real power in its reduced nature – but all taken together, and it can become a bit too much, all intimate, melancholy loss, no bigger action.

Criticizing The Low Anthem for getting too personal in their folk is a bit cruel, as that’s certainly the harder part of the equation to master, but it’s that kind of balance that made Dylan that the icon he is.  The singer recently performed on The Grammys with two other young folk acts caught up in this recent wave, The Avett Brothers (QRO album review) and Mumford & Sons (QRO live review) – performing his bigger "Maggie’s Farm", though.  The Low Anthem don’t need to go electric like "Judas" did at Newport way back when, but maybe leaven their folk.

MP3 Stream: "Boeing 737"

{audio}/mp3/files/The Low Anthem – Boeing 737.mp3{/audio}

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