The Low Anthem - 'Oh My God, Charlie Darwin' (Bella Union) Released 15/06/09

Charles Darwin took a lot of flak for his theory of natural selection; attempting to bring order to nature by suggesting that mankind evolved from Monkeys and Apes was, at the time, a preposterous proposition. So in a roundabout way it’s rather fitting that he’s informally name-checked on The Low Anthem’s third album, a hybrid of genetically engineered generic cross-breeding.

Fashioned in the seclusion of an island cabin twelve miles off the coast of Rhode Island with twenty something instruments, including brooms, filing cabinets and a World War One pump organ, ‘Oh My God, Charlie Darwin’ is an agnostic mix of startling beauty and haunting comment that juxtaposes contemplative slumber with Bourbon soaked blithe by fusing country, folk and blues to create a body of work beyond adequate descriptive reach.  

Avant-garde genre blurring its not, but that’s beside the point as the opening track ‘Charlie Darwin’ walks a falsetto tightrope of nostalgically joyous lament, evocatively persuasive enough to penetrate the soul in the same way as the acoustic fragility and hushed balladry of its successor ‘To Ohio’.

But like so many albums of this ilk, this is the point of no return, where some swim but many more sink, the dead weight of delicate musings, no matter how well crafted, threatening to sign a death certificate under a yawn of hypoxic indifference. Praise Charlie Darwin then for the chicken coop foot stomping change of pace ‘The Horizon Is A Beltway’, ‘Champion Angel’ and cover of ‘Home I’ll Never Be’ (words by Jack Kerouac music by Tom Waits) offer in a show of unkempt country at its dirty beard scratching best.

That said in keeping with the idea of survival of the fittest, the majority of the album is melancholic but the hope of acceptance ultimately overrides any fatalistic resignation. Despite intimately commenting on a societal order facing collapse, The Low Anthem eke beauty from the most unlikely of scenarios; the ‘Ticket Taker’ love story set amid a twenty-first century recount of biblical floods and the handclap acknowledgement that simply not knowing is perfectly acceptable in ‘OMGCD’.

Whether or not Charlie Darwin was right or wrong is always going to subject to fierce debate, but what is certain is that this is an album capable of reaffirming evolutionist belief while making an offer of forbidden fruit that even the most loyal of creationists would find hard to refuse.