Photo by Ryan Mastro

“We travel with about 14 instruments, and most of us play four or five of them reasonably well,” explains The Low Anthem’s Ben Knox Miller from his cell phone, as the quartet travels through Italy on a late March afternoon before a gig in Milan. “We’re often using the instruments for the colors they provide rather than being some kind of expressive instrumentalists. For example, I play horns but I don’t really know how to play horns. I can’t play any songs that we don’t play onstage.”

Such a resourceful approach defines the Low Anthem, which handcrafted the jackets to its early CDs and fashioned its own recording space in a former pasta sauce factory for its new record, Smart Flesh. In December 2009, the band set up shop in an abandoned mill building/compound in Central Falls, R.I. and gradually fabricated its own studio, clubhouse and crash pad.

Three years earlier and 15 miles to the south, The Low Anthem originated at Brown University, where Miller and Jeff Prystowsky were overnight DJs on the college’s AM radio station. Along with Dan Lefkowitz, they began making the rounds as a modern folk trio. Lefkowitz soon became disenchanted with the lifestyle of a touring musician and left a year later – but not without offering a parting gift, the song “This God Damn House,” which shares a litany of his frustrations and remains a live staple. The tune appears on the band’s debut, 2007’s self-released What the Crow Brings, which also features Jocie Adams on clarinet for one track. Adams’ contribution then helped her score a full-time spot in the group. Oh My God Charlie Darwin followed in 2008, demonstrating the band’s knack for presenting timeless themes on a variety of vintage instruments, while ingratiating the group on two continents, leading to festival gigs at Bonnaroo, Glastonbury and Newport Folk. The current line-up solidified before the Smart Flesh sessions with the addition of multi-instrumentalist Mat Davisson.

Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes, Monsters of Folk) mixed most of tracks on Smart Flesh while The Low Anthem self-produced them. The new album is a bit bleaker than Charlie Darwin, which Miller attributes in part to the atmosphere of the recording space. “The songs on Smart Flesh are not rosy or optimistic although I do think they’re love songs in their aspirations. But recording in this abandoned city of industrial buildings there was just a chilling vibe for a record that’s pretty desolate and vaguely set in the demise of capitalism.”

Unlike Charlie Darwin, which relied on overdubs (and led to the addition of drummer Cyrus Scofield for a stretch starting in 2008 when the band considered how to best present the material at its shows), Smart Flesh was predominantly recorded live to tape allowing for a relatively easy translation to the concert setting. Still, Miller acknowledges, “We’ve never been satisfied to go through the motions. The minute that the magic seems to be departing, it’s time to go back to the drawing board and consider a new arrangement.”

The range of instruments that The Low Anthem travels with abets this process, becoming essential to the band’s sound and part of its story (one Amazon.com customer review describes Smart Flesh as “What Bob Dylan would have sounded like if he appeared in the 1860s rather than the 1960s” ). Lately, the group has augmented its collection with a series of road scores. “It happens by accident as often as by forethought, whether it’s stopping at a tag sale or if somebody sees a show and says ‘I have just the thing for you’ and hands over some weird African drum that finds its way into an arrangement,” Miller laughs. “Someone donated a 600 pound church organ, somebody gave us a hammered dulcimer and someone else recently dropped off an accordion that was played in The Hawks [the precursor to The Band].”

The pace of such contributions has accelerated as of late, mirroring the group’s path to more renown. “We spent two years of touring before any audience was coming out to our shows in the [United] States,” Miller remarks. “But the first time we showed up in Europe, our shows were sold out. At first we didn’t really understand how that could happen but I suppose it’s just the buzz culture.”

The Low Anthem has benefited from a Web-accelerated career arc but as Miller contemplates this, he also evinces a purity of intent, suggesting that the group will transcend it. “This culture of hype and appeal is made to the vanity of these upcoming bands. I think some of them lose their bearings and don’t remember what it is to sing a song to someone, don’t remember what a sacred idea that is.”