Smart Flesh [CD]

After the (critical at least) success of 2009's 'Oh My God, Charlie Darwin', you could easily have forgiven The Low Anthem going all Kings Of Leon on us and releasing a more radio friendly unit shifter in the vein of the Tennessians recent 'Come Around Sundown' LP. This is the route that many a lesser band would have endeavoured to take and it is to the Rhode Islander's credit that they have stuck to their initial vision and once again plundered the depths of the 'quiet storm'.

So the fable goes that 'Smart Flesh' was recorded in an abandoned pasta sauce factory in their native Rhode Island. This is easily identifiable by the records vast depth of sound which is akin to hearing a beautiful hymn being sung in the Sistine Chapel. Tracks such as 'Matter Of Time' or 'Burn' take joy from the smallest of incident (see the incredible use of theirmin in the latter) almost evoking a religious like epiphany. From these quite awakenings, seas could part and man could ressurect from death. The band seem to take joy in making music that is borne from the ether, it feels like a strong wind would blow it away like petals on a violet flower, never to be heard of again.

These quiet, almost hymnal moments are undoubtedly the records high point with opener 'Ghost Woman Blues' and the penultimate 'Golden Cattle' being barely auidible beneath the deafening silence but devastating in their noise. But amongst all this silence sits the standout 'Boeing 737' which is most easily indentifible as being this record's 'The Horizon Is A Beltway' (from OMGCD). The track seems to revisit that fateful day of September 11th 2001 with the incredible verse:

I was in the bar when they rigged the towers,
Trying to leave all my sins,
The barmaid asked my order,
And where my mind had been,
I tried to recall that high wire,
Phillippe and his foot there in heaven,
As the prophets entered bodly into the bar,
On the Boeing 737, Lord, on the Boeing 737.

all the while the band play as if on an artillary field. It is a true stand out moment that will surely leave The Arcade Fire watching their collective backs in the future.

Overall this is a truly magical record which deserves repeated listens by anyone who loved the band's previous work or by anyone who enjoys the music of artists such as Lambchop (circa 'Is A Woman'), Bonnie Prince Billy or Fleet Foxes.

RECOMMENDED.

I'm not sure about this one. Originally I was all excited about them recording vocals in a disused factory. I had a vision of angelic voices echoing through the ages. Instead, it focusses on the rootsier elements of their sound and, if I'm honest, is a bit one-paced. It's lost the more profound element of their earlier work and goes for the American Gothic end of the market. Plenty of history on show and you know they understand their blues and folk subjects. However, it's strangely uninvolving and lacks the contrast of OMGCD. I sort of miss the hopeful pure voices which have been replaced by a cracked, beaten down resignation. Maybe it'll grow on me with a few more listens. Let's put it this way, I bought it a few weeks ago and have listened to it three times through and on each occasion, I've put it aside with the intention of really sitting down with my headphones on and each night, I've left it alone to listen to an alternative. One to work on? But is that what they really want?

Recording an album in a vast abandoned pasta sauce factory near Rhode Island clearly impacted on The Low Anthem for their third release "Smart Flesh". On times you can almost feel the shivering inducing atmospherics seep into this record. As such it is an album that has more in common with their 2007 country orientated "What the crow brings" than 2009's breakthrough "Oh my god Charlie Darwin" with Ben Knox Miller and co returning with a sparse and eerily slow piece of work which brims with nostalgia and fragile delicacy. "Smart Flesh" is an album you have going to have to stick with until its starts to burrow into your head like an old prairie dog into the great plains. It has a flyover states feel to it and the spirits of Gram Parsons, Emmylou Harris, Leonard Cohen, The Band and Mercury Rev scream out of its vinyl grooves and often luminous compositions.

The Low Anthem are a band that reaffirms your faith in real music. 2009s "Oh my god Charlie Darwin" was one of the best of albums of that year and in ballads like "To Ohio", "To the Ghosts who write history books" and "Charlie Darwin" they produced some of the finest songs of the past decade. Yet judged together "OMGCD" was a bit of a bi-polar record with lovely choral folk sitting alongside Pogues style out and out stompers. "Smart Flesh" is alternatively more of a unified and complete whole but it does have real weakness and you may struggle to get to excited by either "Love and alter" which just about stays the right side of an Art Garfunkel song, the glacially ponderous title track which could have been happily edited from its seven plus minutes to half its length or the pleasant but rather anodyne instrumental "Wire". There is little doubt that some Amazon buyers will complain with real justice that the prevailing solemnness appears to make the record devoid of real colour and somewhat atonal particularly on the first few listens and for a while I had this marked at three stars.

Yet there is real depth here and in "Apothecary love" the band have recorded a stone cold country classic in the mould of Gram Parsons destined to be covered by long established Nashville artists who desire a career kick start, while the lovely "Matter of time" is a heartbreakingly beautiful lament. It is the Leonard Cohen inspired "Burn" however that stands out with a oh so tender vocal by Knox Miller making it one of the best songs of the year thus far and full marks for the employment of the best use of a bow saw since Mercury Rev's "Deserters Songs". Only two songs break the prevailing mood and they are the thumping and raucous "Boeing 747" presumably about the 9/11 outrages could have happily appeared on Arcade Fire's "The suburbs". The swirling organ based "Hey all you hippies" conversely sounds like the Low Anthem have been down in the same basement in Woodstock that gave Dylan and the Band so much inspiration all those years ago.

Ultimately this is not quite the outright classic that Miller and co would want the album to be and after numerous listens it's difficult to plot a routemap where this band go next but it will be very interesting to watch. In one sense "Smart Flesh" is the dark side and counterpoint to the Decemberists recent album of bright Americana "The King is dead". That said this an album where the highlights such as the brilliant "Ghost Woman blues" or the frontier banjo folk of "I'll take out your ashes' make you forgive the weaknesses. "Smart flesh" will require a real investment of time and commitment for the listener but there are sure signs here that it will reward aplenty as you grow to appreciate its nuances and subtleties. It is a slow burner from a band which is nonetheless rapidly maturing towards peak fitness.