When you have a huge pile of CD’s to review, it’s prudent at times to try and make as many first impressions of what you’re listening to as possible. In many cases you can write off an album as amazing, trite or somewhere in between in the space of a few songs. Plenty of bands reveal their blueprint on track one and stick with it loyally to the bitter end (aka track twelve). To formulate such opinions on The Low Anthem’s second LP would be to do them an incredible disservice.
Track 1 ‘Charlie Darwin’ evokes comparisons to Fleet Foxes and Neil Young – it’s relaxed, stripped down, ethereal and quite effective. It’s enough to have you settling down for another eleven doses of fairly high pitched alt-folk. ‘To Ohio’ is next, and adds an ambient edge to proceedings, but it all feels fairly relaxed.
Then Americana gatecrashes the party and you can’t help but feel surprised. ‘The Horizon is a Beltway’ and ‘Home I’ll Never Be’ are fine examples of gruff Americana, lively in nature, like a more engaging version of The Hold Steady. Suddenly we’re in the realm of instantly catchy songs that would bring any barn dance to life. Later in the album
This is not an album you can predict, or rest comfortably in the knowledge that you’ve got the tone and style sussed. ‘Ticket Taker’ is a throaty whisper backed with an acoustic guitar. ‘To the Ghosts Who Write History Books’ is an ominous ballad, complete with haunting keyboard parts and male-female vocals. It’s track six and the fifth different style employed on the album so far.
‘Music Box’ is yet another deviation, a sparse track sounding exactly like a music box, strangely enough. ‘Champion Angel’ is a big country-rock number, mixing Black Rebel Motorcycle riffs with the good bits of Kings Of Leon (in other words, the older stuff). It grows as the minutes pass, and is perhaps the most straightforward song on the album. This is followed by a change in tone once more with the positively ecclesiastical ‘Cage the Songbird,’ where all the aggression of the previous song is released, possibly to the sight of a thousand doves being released into a snowy sky.
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There’s plenty to hear here, and too much to place in one review. Each song is a new revelation, and if there are some that aren’t to your taste, it seems almost guaranteed that you’ll find something else later. This is essentially an eclectic Americana album, leaping around the periphery of the genre and pulling in influences from all over the show.
The challenge here is to make this sound like a cohesive collection of songs – an album rather than a compilation of ideas. It works – somehow it does. With so many different ideas, you feel that something has to give on the quality – but it appears that this is a band who are multi-faceted masters of everything they have a go at. There’s no opportunity to get bored listening to this, especially when you’re safe in the knowledge that the next song will be a whole new ball game.
The Low Anthem: Pigeon-hole them at your peril.
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