WORTH THEIR SALT

The Low Anthem’s aquatic-themed concept album shows that this band have indeed come a long way, says Andy Gill

The Low Anthem, The Salt Doll Went to Measure the Depth of the Sea

★★★★☆

Download: Bone Of Sailor, Bone Of Bird; Give My Body Back; Drowsy Dowsing Dolls; Toowee Toowee; Cy Twombly By Campfire

Over the course of a decade, The Low Anthem metamorphosed from the alt-folk harmonies of Oh My God, Charlie Darwin to the fantastical psychedelia of 2016’s Eyeland.

But just as that album was released, a tour van crash destroyed much of their gear and left co-founder Jeff Prystowsky concussed in hospital for several weeks. Unable to tour, the band’s other prime mover, Ben Knox Miller, was reading a John Cage biography and became struck by the fable that inspired this latest shift in direction.

It’s a satisfying response to their last album ‘Eyeland’, shifting from that album’s lofty cosmic speculations to more earthly, though equally philosophical, musings A salt doll, seeking to know more about itself, is told that salt comes from the ocean, and heads for the sea. When it puts a toe in the water, it learns something, but loses the toe; and the more it immerses, the more it learns, but the less of it remains – until it finds self-knowledge in complete dissolution.

As Prystowsky recuperated, Knox Miller embarked on this concept album, imagining the salt doll’s subsequent submersive explorations, which then form the diving-off points for a dozen short, spare reflections on being and nothingness. It’s a satisfying response to Eyeland, shifting from that album’s lofty cosmic speculations to more earthly, though equally philosophical, musings: from sky to sea, from extrovert to introvert, from vast to tiny. And like the protagonist of The Incredible Shrinking Man, the journey results in a sort of epiphany of infinity which, despite the album’s short running-time, resonates long after it’s finished.

“Bone Of Sailor, Bone Of Bird” opens the album on the cusp of life and death, with Knox Miller’s musings about “dust, only flakes of skin” set to minimal piano notes and quietly puttering percussion – an example of the restricted options available following the loss of their equipment. Elsewhere, vinyl scratches, glitchy percussion beds and barely perceptible tints of keyboards, guitar, trumpet, woodwind and violin combine with Knox Miller’s breathy falsetto in an immersive, ambient manner that recalls James Blake – though here applied to matters of head rather than heart.

In “Give My Body Back”, the doll realises “there were deserts on the sea floor, mountains higher than any you’d see on land”; while “Gondwanaland” gazes even further back, musing on epochs spent dividing single land and water masses into separate seas and continents. There’s a misty, drifting mood about the album as a whole, though “Cy Twombly By Campfire” develops a gentle pop charm akin to The Beach Boys circa Friends; but old hippies everywhere will appreciate the central message of the salt doll’s journey: “He will become less me, make our way to we, to we”.

This review appeared in yesterday’s Independent Daily Edition