There are just a few days left on The Low Anthem's tour with the Avett Brothers, after which the band will headline its own US tour, beginning in DC. "The Low Anthem isn't the first bunch of indie rockers to experiment with older string-band instruments and echoes of the songs of pre-1940 rural America," says the Washington Post. "But no one has done it better than this Rhode Island trio on its breakthrough album, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin." The A.V. Club talks with front man Ben Knox Miller about the music.
There are just a few days left on The Low Anthem's tour of the American Midwest with the Avett Brothers, which concludes at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor on Tuesday. After that, the Rhode Island quartet will branch out on its own headlining tour of the United States, with support along the way by Lissie, Annie and the Beekeepers, Timber Timbre, The Wheel, and others. It all kicks off with two shows in Washington, DC, on Thursday: a free set at the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage early in the evening followed by a show at the 9:30 Club later that night.
"The Low Anthem isn't the first bunch of indie rockers to experiment with older string-band instruments and echoes of the songs of pre-1940 rural America," says the Washington Post's Geoffrey Himes. "But no one has done it better than this Rhode Island trio on its breakthrough album, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin. That's because very few bands have paid so much attention to detail, or to beauty."
Each track on this, the band's Nonesuch debut album, "is filled with fetching melodies, delivered with pump organs, clarinets, harmonicas and fiddles and with vocals as weary as they are lovely," says Himes.
Read the complete album review at washingtonpost.com.
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The A.V. Club's Steven Hyden describes Oh My God, Charlie Darwin as "a muted, self-consciously old-fashioned folk-rock record whose crystal-clear beauty made it a favorite of critics and Americana bloggers." Hyden spoke with band front man Ben Knox Miller about making music, including the forthcoming follow-up to OMGCD, and about life on the road. You can read the interview at avclub.com.
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In a preview of The Low Anthem's recent tour stop in Indianapolis with the Avett Brothers, the Louisville Courier-Journal's David Daley said the band "made one of the great albums that too few people heard last year. Oh My God, Charlie Darwin is an aching, meticulous masterpiece, at times heartbreaking and hushed, other times sounding like a lost Tom Waits disc."
Looking forward to this weekend's show with the Avetts at Milwaukee's Riverside Theater, On Milwaukee's Bobby Tanzilo writes of the band's hard-to-categorize Nonesuch debut: "Whatever you call it, it works. Oh My God, Charlie Darwin is one of the best records of 2009."
The Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, previewing the band's forthcoming headlining show in Dallas, calls Oh My God, Charlie Darwin "one of 2009's best-kept secrets. This folk-inclined Rhode Island quartet delivered a knockout blow of a single ('Charlie Darwin') that is singularly haunting and visceral in its execution."
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