- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
Whether soft or loud, these 12 songs are exquisite.
-
There's a lot of ground covered here, of course, yet the band never loses sight of its destination, and those who can keep up are in for a tuneful journey.
-
Somehow, though, it soars, the title track especially.
-
Oh My God, Charlie Darwin is a lovely self-release in a beautiful homemade sleeve from a group who can really play.
-
These are magical songs laden with imagery and poignancy.
-
The album closes with a reprise of 'To Ohio'--possibly superfluous given the perfection of the earlier version, but the only marginal misjudgement on an otherwise largely faultless album.
-
MojoOh My God, Charlie Darwin may well be the second best cabin-in-winter indie album ever made. [Jul 2009, p.96]
-
Just as Waits has the power to infuse you with familiarity with the return of a chord, so do the songs of Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, like an embroidered pillow on an old porch that says ‘home sweet home’.
-
As they expose the fragility of love and ultimately humanity, and mourn evolution's victims, they pitch themselves somewhere between Neil Young's heart-rending "Needle And The Damage Done" and a hard-bitten Dylan going electric, all the while retracing traditional folk's footsteps with a wonderfully homespun flourish.
-
Q MagazineThey're intriguingly ambivalent, but the conundrums are so beautifully and hauntingly put, you'll want to revisit them. [Jul 2009, p.125]
-
Re-mastered and re-sequenced from the album's initial September 2008 release, Oh My God flawlessly balances heartfelt warbles with gritty countryside wails.
-
The Low Anthem finds the balance of apocalypse and subtlety sought by the Avett or Felice Brothers but never wrangled so effectively.
-
A peek at the liner notes for Oh My God, Charlie Darwin—which solemnly states that the album was recorded “in the solace of a Block Island winter”--suggests that Rhode Island’s The Low Anthem is angling to be this year’s Bon Iver. The music itself does nothing to dispel the notion.
-
FilterAs Anthem's zithers, pump organs, oil drums, and tibetan singing bowls thrum like summer insects, scientists and spiritualist alike can't help but bow to these haunting paeans to America's heartland. [Summer 2009, p.100]
-
The Low Anthem still needs to devise its own uptempo approach. But the quieter the music gets, in an elegy like 'To Ohio' or a conditional reassurance like '(Don’t) Tremble,' the more its music inhabits its own otherworldly place, where ghosts and angels hover just out of view.
-
A welcome addition to the intricate patchwork quilt of the new wave of Americana.
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 14 out of 15
-
Mixed: 0 out of 15
-
Negative: 1 out of 15
-
Mar 27, 2012
-
Sep 29, 2011
-
MSAug 13, 2009Schizophrenic in its mellowness and straight out country guitar-outs. Probably the second best Neil Young album you'll hear this year.