The Low Anthem - Oh My God, Charlie Darwin (Bella Union)
5/5
By: Alex Hibbert
In the bare stillness of Rhode Island's Block Island, as winter remonstrates against the cabin in which The Low Anthem huddle together, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin is born. As an album reared to inhabit a morally agnostic narrative, and that Ben Knox Miller of the band cited as a juxtaposition of the past, present and future, it's surprising that the result is an album of melodious beauty, as edifying to the mind as it is to the aural senses.
Take opener 'Charlie Darwin' for instance, in which the surrounding seas are tempestuous and TLA's vision of life is "cold and formless," yet, in the end? "it's alright," this feeling of well being augmented by Miller's ethereal falsetto and TLA's hazy folk. It's to the albums credit, then, that it traverses the precipice over a chasm of other peers' sentimental downfalls to create diverse themes in agnostic balladry, whilst also bearing moments of lyrical beauty; '(Don't) Trembles' recorded endearment, "you have got the looks my dear, to make a mountain shake." In 'To Ohio's wayfaring lament, TLA reach a pique of rootsy-Americana that compels a reprisal to close the album, as TLA embellish prior beauty with a hushed harmony and stabbed chord.
But if the album's majority gently sways in bucolic pulchritude, there's a minority that revolts against that ethos; three tracks in which TLA dismiss peaceful protest and crank the amps up in order to make their point, it's like the sound of another band, so stark in contrast to the lull of other cuts here. If Dylan's band (who were rather gentle in actuality) were recently lauded as "like people who turn up at a party and before you know it are blowing doors off their hinges, juggling cats (?) and running around with their hair on fire" on Together Through Life's 'If You Ever Go To Houston' by one publication, then you can only imagine that at The Low Anthem's excessive brouhahas they probably kill relatives and w*nk into jam jars.
It's hard then, considering the praise I've heaped on this release, to write that OMG! might not be considered, by others, wholly successful as an album. As a collection of songs it's completely rambunctious in both scope and sound, and inclusive to the point of trying to play it to anyone that will listen to my eulogistic diatribes for more than a few snatched moments. But, really, there's a sense that the jarring impact 'The Horizon Is A Beltway' has on the opening lilt of the first two tracks almost ruins it. Almost. But yet it doesn't, and so the contrast, in essence, works. It's not completely suited, granted, but ideologies and pioneering attitudes defined the foundations of this very release. "Who could hear the word of Charlie Darwin?" Miller asks. Hopefully many.
Artists in this article: The Low Anthem
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