TAS In Session: The Low Anthem

Stir together a quirky ragù of songs inspired by wire-walkers, explored via vintage instruments and recorded in an abandoned spaghetti sauce factory on the outskirts of Providence, Rhode Island, and you'll have the makings of The Low Anthem's fourth album, curiously titled Smart Flesh.

The Low Anthem are on the road this spring and summer, both headlining and opening for Mumford & Sons and Iron and Wine. However, the closest you'll see them near the New York area in the immediate future is Croton Point Park's Clearwater Festival on June 18. All of The Low Anthem's tour dates are here.

WFUV's Claudia Marshall recently caught up with the quartet of Ben Knox Miller, Jeff Prystowsky, Jocie Adams and Mat Davidson who discussed the new album's curious pedigree and played a generous set of songs, including "Hey, All You Hippies," which Ben cryptically dedicated to a former president. You can also listen to Claudia's full session with The Low Anthem on NPR.org:

Claudia Marshall: A lot of stuff has happened since last time I saw you. You’ve been on Letterman, you’ve been on everything except, maybe, the cover of Rolling Stone. It really has been an interesting period, part of which was spent, allegedly, in an abandoned pasta sauce factory. It sounds like the stuff of musical legend, but I’ve seen some video.

Ben Knox Miller: Of us chasing bats around?

Claudia: Of all places to go to write a record! Why an abandoned pasta sauce factory?

Ben: We wanted that huge, cavernous sound and the place was huge and the landlord was willing to just let us use it for the cost of heating which was considerable, but it just had such a mood. When we went in there and heard the way the voices came back in this distant, murky, moody wash, it just seemed like a challenge; we’d go in there and see how we could bring back a listenable record out of this strange environment.

Claudia: What’s most remarkable to me - was it a Ragu pasta sauce factory? A Newman’s Own? Did you ever find out what pasta sauce they were making?

Jeff Prystowsky: The brand is called Porino’s. They used to make the mayor’s own pasta sauce, the mayor being Buddy Cianci.

Clauda: This sounds like a local, Rhode Island thing.

Ben: Yeah, Central Falls, Rhode Island, right outside of Providence.

Claudia: I guess they went belly up.

Jeff: No, they still make sauce .. but maybe in Mexico.

Claudia: Did you crave pasta while making the album?

Jocie Adams: We made pasta.

Ben: Porino’s. We tried it. We ate the sauce in the building. It was weird. When we went there were rolls and rolls of nutrition facts strewn about the space.

Claudia: Well, I’m goofing on The Low Anthem here, but it’s a beautiful record, made all the more so that I got to hear some of these songs for the very first time at the Newport Folk Festival last summer and that had to be a pretty neat experience for you guys to play Newport, Rhode Island.

Ben: Those artists mostly don’t come to Rhode Island, except for that. There’s really not a large venue for that style of music.

Claudia: But there you were. Did you ever think [you’d play there] because I know you guys picked up garbage there one year, right? Or some of you did?

Jeff: Yeah, that was three years ago.

Ben: It was the only way to get backstage was with a trash-picker’s bag.

Jeff: We had our pockets filled with records and we were handing them out to anyone we recognized. Including you guys.

Claudia: Yes, and we apparently took them and played them. See what happens? You never know.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HH2XL8jDhI&feature=channel_video_title]

Claudia: Jeff is playing an upright bass over there and Mat is playing the saw, and by that I mean a real saw with which one might saw wood, that is bowed and struck with a kind of a mallet and Jocie is playing the dulcimer. And Jocie, I’d asked you before how you learned to play the dulcimer and Jocie’s answer was, “Well, we got one.” And I think the pump organ than Ben is playing is somewhat mysterious in the sense that in order to pump it, you’re moving your feet out of time with the music.

Ben: You could tell? It’s kind of like a bicycle, automatic motion.

Claudia: Kind of like your hands and your head are doing something else while your feet are ….

Ben: It’s like a tic. (laughs).

Claudia: The use of unusual instrumentation is such a big part of your sound. When was the moment when someone said, “I know, let’s play a saw.” Did somebody buy a saw? You saw a saw?

Ben: I don’t know. I can’t remember. But what a beautiful and mysterious sound, you know? It fits right into any mix, it finds its own space in the distance.

Jeff: I think we were listening to a Tom Waits record, at least I remember this, and heard a sound and thought, “What is that thing? Is it a strobe violin? A violin with harmonics? Maybe it’s a saw.” And that started the search.

Claudia: I suppose it could have been a theremin. It’s a somewhat similar sound. Of course there’s a banjo in the room, some horns. There is an electric guitar! How 80s of you guys? Did anyone ever say to you, “What are you doing with all of those weird instruments?”

Ben: I guess it’s like a weird clown car thing when we load out. But they all make distinct sounds so as much as we can fit in the van, we’ll bring.

Jeff: Someone once described it as being like a yard sale when we pull up to a gig.

Claudia: I mean, how many pump organs do you have now? I heard there were several.

Ben: We have five now. It’s becoming a bit absurd.

Claudia: Are you collecting them or searching for the “great” pump organ.

Ben: It’s like a rescue organization. When you see one that’s in danger of being used as a desk, you snatch it up.

Jeff: Coffee table.

Claudia: We were talking earlier about the instruments that the band would never use, including a glockenspiel because you have to actually be from Brooklyn to have a glockenspiel in the band. What was the other one?

Ben: Well, there’s some that we have internal debates about. Like a jaw-harp. We almost broke up over a jaw-harp.

Claudia: It looks like that Jocie was pro jaw-harp? No! You’re hating on the jaw-harp?

Jocie: I don’t hate the jaw-harp. It’s great.

Ben: Do we have that on tape? (all laugh).

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHilE0SL27E&feature=channel_video_title]

Claudia: There’s a lo-fi sensibility to the band but there’s nothing lo-fi about the record itself. Obviously, you’re using the room as an instrument when you’re recording, but you’re also using top of the line equipment to get the sound. Is that true?

Ben: It was actually pretty modest. We had a small budget to assemble our own studio so we only got the essential things. Everything is analog and warm before it goes into the computer, but really basic pre-amps. We wanted to get away from the Pro-Tools sound so that was the idea with the building. We’d make as much of the noise form in the space of the building before we captured it on the way in, so we’d often use really distant mics to get the sound that way instead of using different kinds of Pro-Tools effects. But it was a pretty steep learning curve to learn how to do that because everything is bleeding together and a lot of the busier songs got eaten up by the space. So it had pros and cons.

Jeff: It could sound really out of control, even if you have top of the line gear, like you’re talking about, a lot of what makes a studio sound is also the acoustically treated room. So even if you bring in all of that pro-gear, if you’re in some random building that isn’t treated, it’s going to be out of control. It was difficult to find that balance.

Claudia: It must be difficult to recreate the sound of the record when you’re not in an abandoned pasta sauce factory.

Ben: I was just talking to someone yesterday and I realized that we’re actually playing in an abandoned factory in Massachusetts as one of the shows. So that might be the only show where we can really create the sound.

Claudia: Could someone tell me what this next song is about? Are you hating on the hippies?

Ben: No, this is pro-hippie ... This goes out to Ronald Reagan.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=audNjWgJF_A&feature=channel_video_title]

Claudia: You guys actually have two songs on this record that refer to high-wire artists - did you realize that?

Ben: Yes, when we were first making the record there was a whole suite of songs on this theme and some of them just died in the process for various reasons. Who knows why, but the ones that survived, there’s now a certain vagueness to the idea because there’s so many holes in it. Jocie’s clarinet piece in the middle is like this wire between the halves and even the central song from the record was once about Philippe Petit and then was a victim of different recording problems.

Claudia: So there was another song that dealt with Petit that went by the wayside?

Ben: Yes, he was the hero of the record at one point.

Claudia: You referenced Jocie’s beautiful song called “Wire,” and the other song that references a high-wire artist is the song from which the record takes its title, “Smart Flesh.” What does that mean to you?

Ben: I don’t know. It’s hard to say. But we made it the title of the record, just to steer it - I feel like all of the songs sort of circle around that song or come to that song. It’s like the middle of the constellation. I don’t know. If I could say it, then we wouldn’t have to make this whole record about it.

Claudia: Sometimes it changes meaning over time which is a weird phenomenon when you write a song and find out that it means something completely different to you later. I’ve also wondered about the the name of the band, The Low Anthem. Did you mean low, as in a quiet anthem?

Ben: It was actually kind of a given name. There was a previous member of the band who gave us this name and we found out some years later that he’d come up with the name from the Ayn Rand novel, Anthem. We don’t know how to feel about that.

Claudia: I think a lot of us have mixed feelings about those novels.

Ben: Yes.

Claudia: There’s a lot of different feelings to your music. Sometimes it’s more raucous and sometimes extremely quiet and both of those moods live on this record. The very first song is a very quiet song, more in the mode of Oh My God, Charlie Darwin. Do you want to say anything about this song before you play it?

Ben: It’s a song by George Carter, written and recorded in 1929. It’s about a a hitchhiker that he meets and is seduced by on his way home.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqP0K46bh08&feature=channel_video_title]