Low In The Dark

With the centenary of Ronald Reagan’s birth in an Illinois tin-shack upon us, America is in the grip of one of its occasional bouts of Gipper-mania. Graduates of an Ivy League college and proud citizens of the super liberal American north-east, it comes as little surprise to discover Providence, Rhode Island’s The Low Anthem have resisted joining in the hero worship of a president no less a figure than Barack Obama was moved to declare one of the country’s most influential ever. Quite the opposite in fact. Far from whistling ‘Hail To The Chief’ and wrapping themselves in Old Glory, on new LP, Smart Flesh, the quartet declare Reagan “protector, lover of freedom, poet of justice” with enough sarcasm to tranquilise a bull elephant. Or at least we presume it’s sarcasm?

“Yeah, it’s definitely tongue-in-cheek,” says singer, Ben Knox Miller, stroking his trademark scruffy beard. “We thought... how appropriate. If everyone is celebrating Ronald Reagan here, maybe we could do something with that which was relevant to what we were doing.”
Not that Smart Flesh is generally brimming with anti-Tea Party invective. Recorded in an abandoned pasta factory in the rust-belt fringes of Providence, the record is a ghostly, lulling, (and most apolitical )affair, stalked by the ghosts of past relationships and the chill that comes with the realisation you have no idea where your life is leading. Listening to the lyrics, rendered in Miller’s folksy twang, you can glean a deep emotional turmoil on the part of the frontman. This elicits a neutral shrug on his behalf – he is quick to point out that Smart Flesh’s chilly ambiance owes as much to the environment in which the record was created as to the mind-state of the musicians.
“The place we did it isn’t really a recording studio at all,” he explains. “It’s an abandoned factory building, part of a mill complex that shut down about 15 years ago. It’s quite beautiful but the story behind it is very tragic. A lot of people lost their jobs. It’s terrible really. The one we used to be in used to make pasta... It’s very haunting, especially later in the evening. There are all these creaks and very few lights. You are in a ghost town. All around you are abandoned factory buildings. It’s so atmospheric – a great place to record.”
Were a band to attempt something similar in Ireland, chances are they would be overrun with vermin, junkies and random homeless people.
“Well, that’s pretty much how it was for us!” laughs Ben. “You got it in one. The other problem is that we hadn’t allowed for how cold it would get. Man, it got really cold. We had three large heaters hanging from the wall. We thought we would heat the building during the day and that it would stay warm at night. It didn’t hold the heat at all – most of the time it was the same temperature as outside. We were in our scarves and winter coats. Imagine trying to make a record in an environment like that? There were issues to be overcome, putting it mildly.”
Self-declared introverts, The Low Anthem‘s career arc has belied their wallflower personas. Formed by Miller and Jeff Prystowsky, who met whilst working on campus radio at Providence’s Brown University, the group attracted a cultish fanbase via a self-titled 2006 debut. However it was 2008’s Oh My God, Charlie Darwin – a folk record which slyly baited creationists – that truly shunted them into the overtake lane. Described by Miller as “akin to taking shelter during a lightning storm among nostalgic remnants in a water-damaged church”, the record basked in five star write-ups and saw the group sell out venues such as Dublin’s Vicar St.
Though approximately halfway between New York and Boston, Miller says Providence can be a difficult place from which to kickstart a career. As far as the American entertainment industry is concerned, the city – birthplace of horror great H.P. Lovecraft and where a fledgling Talking Heads came together – may as well not exist. Nobody comes here to scout for new artists; even touring bands by-pass it on their treks up and down the coast. Despite a metro-area population of nearly a quarter of a million, it is a twilight locale, seemingly destined to be perennially overlooked by the rest of the United States. This, it turns out, suits The Low Anthem just fine.
“It’s off the beaten path,” says the singer. “It’s not rural. However it is a city everyone passes going between New York and Boston. That includes not just businesses, but touring bands. There are groups who would draw 500 people in NYC and would be lucky to get 100 in Providence. Which is weird ‘cos it’s not that far away. In terms of community and freedom to be an artist though, we couldn’t have found somewhere better.”

Smart Flesh is out now. The Low Anthem play Vicar St, Dublin on April 10. You can listen to 'Ghost Woman Blues' on hotpress.com.