“The building didn’t hold heat at all. It was too cold for fast chops and too cold to relax,” recalls Ben Knox Miller, who, with the rest of The Low Anthem, hunkered down in December of 2009 for a winter of recording in a cavernous, derelict pasta sauce factory in Central Falls, RI. Miller, with band-mates Jeff Prystowsky, Jocie Adams, and newest member, Mat Davidson, teamed up with engineer Jesse Lauter to construct a studio in the disused space. They played a wide variety of often unusual instruments, combining folk with blues, hymnals, barn-stompers and whispered meditations to create Smart Flesh, their third record (released on February 22, 2011). 

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Smart Flesh was self-produced by the band, mixed largely by Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes, Monsters of Folk), and mastered by Bob Ludwig. The record features recordings of older tour staples “Ghost Woman Blues” and “Golden Cattle,” along with new songs such as “Love and Altar” and “Boeing 737.” Having toured for two years since their last album Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, the band had plenty of time to write songs, experiment with arrangements, and day-dream the scope of this recording project. What they had in mind was a massive undertaking. Ten days were spent hauling furniture, gear, carpet scraps, and cabling to prepare the 40,000 square feet of vacant factory to be both a home and a recording instrument for Smart Flesh—all that before a single note was played. Paranormal hitchhikers, taught highwires, aircraft, swelling tumors, whirring machinery, deserted highways, mannequins, cremation, and formaldehyde make up the language of Smart Flesh. The album’s heroes, if there be heroes, are wiremen and lovers—reckless dreamers turning vain contortions in the swill of death.

Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, the band’s previous album, was recorded in January of 2008 in an empty summer cabin on Block Island, RI, and originally self-released by the band that September in true DIY style (the band hand- painted and silkscreened all 2,000 of the first run of the CD packages). Despite having no distribution, booking agent, or publicist, Charlie Darwin was received enthusiastically and the band toured steadily on the strength of word of mouth. The independent success of this album led to record deals in the UK with Bella Union and in the US with Nonesuch, which re-released Oh My God, Charlie Darwin in June 2009. Growing steadily over the past two years, the band has toured with artists ranging from Iron & Wine to Emmylou Harris and The National to The Avett Brothers and Ray Lamontagne. They also played numerous festivals including Bonnaroo, Glastonbury, Newport Folk, Lollapalloza, and Prospect Park’s Celebrate Brooklyn. At the end of 2009, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin was listed in the top of many music publications’ best of year lists and the band picked up MOJO’s Breakthrough Artist Honours award.

The Low Anthem originally met and grew to its current lineup in a handful of ways: Miller (of Ossining, NY) and Prystowsky (of New Jersey) became fast friends sharing graveyard-shift duties as DJs at Brown University’s radio station. With a laughably small listenership, their playlists were primarily for one another. The band became serious for these two when, fresh out of school they teamed up with a gravel-voiced and blues-obsessed Virginian by the name Dan Lefkowitz. The three hatched the beginnings of the band’s sound over nine volatile months together in their Providence apartment, until tensions and divergent interests finally led to Dan’s departure. Bostonian and former NASA technician Jocie Adams soon stepped into the vacancy, after being asked to play clarinet on the final track for their first album, What the Crow Brings. Her fluency with classical composition and arrangement and her intuitive musicality would dramatically expand the band’s horizons. Miller and Prystowsky credit her for being largely responsible for new sense of harmony featured in Oh My God, Charlie Darwin. The band first befriended Mat Davidson (of Roanoke, VA) in these early days gigging in Boston, and in October of 2009 asked him to come on board. Being a versatile multi-instrumentalist and a pure singer, he was a match for their frenetic instrument swapping and harmonic style. Smart Flesh is The Low Anthem’s first recording effort as a quartet.

Along the way, The Low Anthem have not only grown in numbers, they have also added new influences and instruments. After two years of scouring yard sales, attics and eBay while on tour, the band could easily open a second hand music shop, with sufficient peculiarities to be the envy of Brooklyn hipsters and historical preservation societies alike. Most notably they collect and repair antique pump organs, but have also gathered oversized drum kits, hammered dulcimers, autoharps, singing bowls, banjos, steel drums, crotales, horns of all shapes, and a 600 pound pipe organ—they are obsessive scavengers, reverent of oddity and fanatical in the search for sound. The eclectic array of instruments used on Smart Flesh includes jaw harp, musical saw, stylophone, antique organs, and an elaborate scheme to re-amp noise through various chambers of the factory.