8/26: Surprise Me Mr. Davis/The Low Anthem @ The Bell House

I first heard of The Low Anthem when Bob Boilen named “Charlie Darwin” one of his favorite songs of the year so far.  The rest of their second album, “Oh My God, Charlie Darwin” deserves significant praise as well, and I’ve barely strayed from it since early July.  I was moderately familiar with their catalog and knew nothing about the live show, except that there were three of them, and at one time there was a fourth that wrote one of the songs they played.

The Low Anthem started, well, low, with slow, rich songs that captivated the audience.  Seeing a person or band render an audience absolutely silent and attentive is rare and beautiful.  The most notable instance for me was Iron and Wine at Webster Hall, which further solidified my infatuation with that band.  Another time!

One of the things I admire about The Low Anthem’s live show is that it is sort of messy, but passionate.  A few of the songs had ragged, loose endings, but throughout the set they played with such intensity and feeling that the flubs were easily acceptable.  At one point, the primary voice in the band took out and opened his cell phone and, I thought at the time, was checking for messages.  He walked over to a bag by the keys and took out and opened another cell phone, then started whistling and went back to the microphone.  He had called the other cell phone and whistled into them, which created an eerie, choppy, reverberating effect that I had never seen nor heard.

The Low Anthem have a thin but full sound and arm themselves with the means to reproduce necessary elements on demand.  They made heavy use of what looked to be small cymbals and a bow, not unlike running your finger along the edge of a glass.  The drummer played with maracas on a song or two.

Bands that can put together a solid album with many layers and can nearly replicate it in a live setting without the help of prerecorded tracks are of an unfortunate yet delicious minority, especially here in Brooklyn.  The Low Anthem is my favorite type of band, and they have the songwriting to support themselves.  I fucking loved this show.

The Low Anthem opened for Surprise Me Mr. Davis with Marco Benevento, who put on a restrained show.  By that I mean every single member of this band is a phenomenal musician in his own right, but the songs they choose to play fall in that boring purgatory between jam bands and indie rock (henceforth known as “jindie brock”), along with bands like Wilco and moe.

At times, Surprise Me Mr. Davis took full and righteous advantage of the songs that left room for improvisation.  In the first song that called for a keys solo, Marco Benevento tore it the fuck up.  During an instrumental break in the fourth song, the members of the Slip provided one of the highlights of the night.  This band will never play a bad show, I’m just in the unfortunate position of knowing what they can do and wondering why they don’t.  They’re definitely worth checking out, especially if you’re into the jindie brock scene, but I don’t know that I’d venture further than the Bell House to see them again.

Some pictures from the show below.  Next up:  figuring that out sounds like a good Monday morning breakfast activity.