Low Anthem Excited to Release 'Smart Flesh' After Waiting Over Two Years

Low Anthem devotees will be glad that the wait for new material is over -- after all, it's been two years since the indie-folk outfit issued their breakthrough record, 'Oh My God, Charlie Darwin.' But after the Rhode Island band released its third album, 'Smart Flesh,' on Feb. 22 via Nonesuch, few people were more pleased than frontman Ben Knox Miller.

"It's been such a long time now and all the while of this two-and-a-half-year album cycle, for want of a better way to put it, we've been thinking about these new songs," he tells Spinner. "Now it feels like we can go out and do this thing we've been waiting for for so long."

The wait wasn't due to the artistic process, as the songs that make up 'Smart Flesh' have been percolating for a while -- it was down to the business side if being a band. As is often the case, Nonesuch signed the Low Anthem in the US and Bella Union did the honors in the UK after buzz had built following the band self-releasing 'Charlie Darwin' and touring under their own steam. "When we signed with those record companies, we already were a few months into the record," Miller says. "We thought maybe it's not too late, we can do this [touring] again. That was early 2009 and half a year had gone by. Then they sent us all over."

There are no complaints on that front though. The success of 'Charlie Darwin' opened a lot of doors financially, creating a different recording experience for 'Smart Flesh.' "From the business side, it was a different ballgame," Miller says. "We never could have predicted where we'd be now when we first started working on this new record. It doesn't change your mindset though -- we had an idea, we went into the project with a set of parameters. We just had an artistic project that we wanted to execute as well as we could."

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