Oh My God, Charlie Darwin (Reissue)

The Low Anthem's Nonesuch debut, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, offers an elegant sort of Americana. It's songs - about long-ago travels and romantic travails, eternal longing and inevitable leaving - are often hushed, dreamy and mysterious. Simple folk-song structures are uplifted by hymn-like, chamber music arrangements. The three young multi-instrumentalists - Bem Knox, Miller, Jeff Prystowsky and Jocie Adams - recorded the album in the most remote place they could find near their Providence, Rhode Island, home: "In the ghostly stillness of a Block Island winter," as they put it. The intimacy of the makeshift studio they created in their chilly off-season environs is palpable; Paste declared, "The Low Anthem's harmonica-and-string-flavored ballads are as haunting as they are gorgeous. This group of Providence up-and-comers knows how to break your heart and make you smile at the same time." Not everything is understated, though, on "The Horizon is a Beltway," they raise an exuberant acoustic clatter that recalls Bruce Springsteen's work with his Seeger Sessions Band. They also cover Tom Waits' "Home I'll Never Be," a raucous adaptation of a Jack Kerouac poem.

This Nonesuch re-release comes in a hand-silkscreened jacket, and has been re-sequenced and remastered by Bob Ludwig.