The Low Anthem + Joe Pug - Somerville Theatre (boston, ma; oct. 21, 2011)

When Joe Pug and his bandmates took to the stage last Friday night, it was the sparsest crowd I’ve seen him perform for since the beginning of his Pickathon set in 2009 (see photos starting at #58.) That performance that ended up packed to the gills with sweaty and appreciative fans. Standing at the back of Somerville Theater, handing my ticket to the gentlemen showing people to their seats I expected the same thing to happen. I exclaimed to my new friend: “I can’t believe there’s no one here to see Joe Pug.”

Alas, it wasn’t to be the case this evening. Unfortunately for Joe and friends, the MBTA had a colossal meltdown which derailed people trying to get to the show for over an hour. Undaunted, the trio put on the kind of show that has been winning fans across the country over the past few years. If you’ve yet to catch his act, make plans to do so post haste.

The last subway-riding stragglers piled into the theater just in time for the featured act. The audience cheered lustily when The Low Anthem’s Ben Knox Miller remarked that the band had earlier played for the Boston Occupants of Dewey Square, applauding the folks doing something about our “degenerate democracy,” and dedicating “Matter of Time” – “the laziest love song we know” – to the occupods.

The shout out came as no surprise. The band’s earnest, ’63-Dylan temperament fairly begs for a movement or a cause, though their lyrics tend to a more obscure, melancholic kind of politics (though one could perhaps make a case for “As The Flame Burns Down” as an Occupy Anthem: “What’s yours is mine / Bless the words that meant farewell / The winds that finally filled your sails / Bless those tethers when they tore / What’s yours is mine / And mine is yours”).

The Low Anthem plays with such fluency – they’ve been touring ceaselessly for a year and some – that they risk erasing any possibility of accident, of surprise, from their deceptively simple songs. So the band makes a point of strewing their music with challenges, most obviously the glut of eccentric-to-obscure instruments that keeps them dancing around between trumpet and saw and organ and dulcimer and banjo and some sort of lab bench of somethings (strings?) conjured with a bow. How many bands can carry off something as precocious as a clarinet as a go-to sound?

The cozy, clear acoustics of the Somerville Theatre served their peculiar instrumentation well, particularly when Miller had the audience break out their cellphones for the signature coda to “This God Damn House,” sending ghostly digital twitterings flitting through the room. Jeff Prystowsky anchors the band in a number of capacities, notably his generously gentle bass harmonies, but he is a treat to watch when he drums. On the mildly raucous “Home I’ll Never Be,” he played with an articulate spasticity, like a slo-mo Animal. At the close of “Hey All You Hippies,” Miller attacked the kit with what looked like a pair of giant drumsticks, Prystowsky deploying a cymbal as shield.

But the bigger counterweight to the peril of airlessness was Miller’s announced “open stage” policy, inviting any and all musicians to join the band, a ballsy challenge given the band’s prodigious talent and spare sound. The first brave soul took up the saw, an instrument of existential uncertainty at the best of times, groping his way through a solo (!) before admitting that he’d only played the thing once before. A few songs and a couple of named guests later, Miller exuberantly announced “That’s I-don’t-know-who-that-is on trombone!” Finally the band drafted half the audience to assist in a rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Bird On A Wire,” with the tallest certified musician holding up fingers to call the changes. It was a compelling moment – Occupy The Stage! – even when the tempo dragged to a dirge. The audience stood to demand more, Miller announced they’d violated the theater’s hard curfew and anyway, had “played everything they’d ever written.”

So, not content with only one or two Occupations, Miller then took to the little traffic-bounded island opposite the Theatre. Circled by a camera- and cigarette-toting throng supplemented by passers-by and buses discharging co-eds, Miller played Woody Guthrie’s “Jesus Christ” solo, feeling his way in the new-winter cold. Joined by friends on guitar and fiddle – the band proper either too wise or too tired to pitch in – Miller then launched into protest perennial “I Shall Not Be Moved,” bellowing “Camping down on Wall St, I shall not be moved” to roars of approval.

DOWNLOAD: The Low Anthem - Ghost Woman Blues (MP3) or Follow us for more The Low Anthem MP3s (Twitter)

The Low Anthem review to your liking? You'll sweat:

The Low Anthem + Birdie Busch - Johnny Brenda’s (Philadelphia, PA; Jan. 28, 2009)

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Photo Feature! Joe Pug + Strand of Oaks - Middle East Upstairs (Boston, MA; Apr. 18, 2010)

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