My New Music Crush: The Low Anthem

I had my first Lollapalooza experience last weekend, and hands down my favorite band of the day was the one I knew the least about before the show. They’re called The Low Anthem- a girl and two guys out of Providence RI that as it turns out are amazingly talented.

Each of them played multiple instruments, and would swap places on stage between songs to pick up whatever the next song required. Each of them were doing at least two things at once at all times- singing, playing the harmonica, drums, the bass, a baritone, clarinet, old timey piano type of instrument I couldn’t identify, and other various musical apparatus.

Low Anthem @ Lolla 2009

At the end of one song, the singer picked up two cell phones and held them near the mike as he was singing. What resulted were sounds sort of like birds chirping and a high pitched, windy noise in tune with the song… Which made perfect sense as the song was a melancholy tune about home (see a video below. That blew me away… not only were they playing instruments I had and had not seen before, he was “playing” cell phones while singing.