live: the low anthem

At last night’s Low Anthem show at Bowery Ballroom, the Providence, R.I., folk group tested out some new tracks, impressed with older favorites, and enlisted the crowd in the most incredible audience-participation act I’ve ever witnessed or been a part of. The band’s most recent effort, last year’s Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, alternated between hushed acoustics and raging hoedowns, although this set focused almost solely on the former.

They started with “Ticket Taker” from Charlie Darwin, fronted by Ben Knox Miller’s low rasp, while behind him, Jocie Adams rose to her tip-toes and back down to her heels with the high notes and crescendos of her clarinet.

All four band members played at least a handful of instruments throughout the night, among them guitar, string bass, pump organ, clarinet, violin, mandolin, harmonica. Some were a little more unconventional, like Mat Davidson’s singing saw and Adams’s crotales played with a bow, but the most intriguing came during “This God Damn House,” before which Miller asked that after the second verse, everyone take out their cell phone and call the person at the show with them, and put them on speakerphone. So, halfway through the song Miller pulled out two phones, called one with the other, then whistled into both of them near the microphone to create glitchy, staticky feedback. As the crowd caught on to what he was doing and started calling one another, the noise swirled and swelled through the venue as everyone grinned in amazement. (The only words I could come up with afterward were “That was fucking awesome”.)

This might not have been something new — it only took a couple of Google searches to learn that they’ve been doing this at shows for a while, and the technique is used on 2007′s What The Crow Brings. But it was new to me and, to say the least, it blew my mind — not only because I had never seen a phone used in that way, but because it sent chills down everyone’s spines.

Other parts of the show were just as magical: During a few songs, the band huddled around one microphone at the very front of the stage and played acoustically, and the pastoral harmonies on “Charlie Darwin” earlier in the evening were equally as enchanting. Bassist Jeff Prystowsky played a solo so intense that even though his fingers were doing most of the work, it still found him gasping for breath (he also had huge holes in the elbows of his button-down shirt). Mixed in with new songs about going to the apothecary (“the indie drug store,” Miller joked) were favorites from Charlie Darwin, like “To Ohio,” “Cage The Songbird” (video below),” “The Horizon Is A Beltway” and the Tom Waits/Jack Kerouac cover “Home I’ll Never Be.” The latter almost morphed into a different song: Instead of a jaunty foot-stomper, it was drawn out and heavier, with Adams belting one of the verses. But slower didn’t mean boring — it just gave it a little more soul.

Video of “Cage The Songbird” by Dominick Mastrangelo:

The Low Anthem @ Bowery Ballroom 4.14.10 from dominick mastrangelo on Vimeo.