Gig review: The Low Anthem, Pleasance Cabaret Bar, Edinburgh

SOMETHING about the air of dishevelment which came with Rhode Island’s Low Anthem – particularly their guitarist and lead singer Ben Knox Miller – chimed perfectly with the music they create. His shirt slumping scruffily down off his shoulder as he battered his guitar, the musical saw slipping from his grasp as he wrestled with a mug of whatever it was he was drinking – and they hadn’t even remembered to bring any CDs to sell afterwards.

Old clichés about the disorganisation of genius come to mind. The Low Anthem are a terrific band whose live show is almost transcendental in its use of the trappings of country and American folk music. They raise a nerve-rattling cacophony during Home I’ll Never Be and the striking Boeing 737, which conflates the fall of the Twin Towers and the 1974 high-wire walk of Philippe Petit between them into a densely visual dream-image. Burn is a reverb-soaked slow funeral march spurred by the alien sound of an apparently over-amplified xylophone, and Charlie Darwin is a gentle strum floating on a lightly-bowed electric guitar.

This God Damn House came with an arresting interactive element, a coda amplified by audience members calling their neighbours on speakerphone. When Miller’s voice wasn’t roaring fit to crack, it approximated the falsetto of The Band’s Richard Manuel, so it was fitting the encore should be a tribute to the recently departed Levon Helm: first Ain’t No More Cane and then the sublime Down There By The Train.

Rating: *****