Artist Discovery Series

October 2008

The Low Anthem Oh My God, Charlie Darwin

Paste Issue #49 Emergent band The Low Anthem open Oh My God, Charlie Darwin with a pair of haunting Nick Drake-like ballads, but after that, all bets are off as they crank up the ancient pump organ and start playing horns, harmonica, banjo, clarinet—and whatever else they might have picked up at a second-hand store—with foot-stomping abandon. Altogether the quartet from Rhode Island plays 27 different instruments on the album, testing the almost endless combinations before hitting on the perfect recipe for each literate and heartfelt song. It's alternately lovely and rollicking and it stopped us in our tracks the first time we heard it. Josh Jackson — Paste

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