By KCRW Volunteer Taryn Olsen
On a Friday afternoon about a month ago, I was the lucky recipient of an extra “mix-tape” style CD kindly compiled by our Music Librarian, Eric J. Lawrence, featuring some of the new or exciting music that had recently been added to KCRW’s music library.
One of the tracks that stood out to me was a song from The Low Anthem’s newest album Smart Flesh called “Hey, All You Hippies!”
The Low Anthem, Smart Flesh – “Hey, All You Hippies!” by foundation
I fell in love with the song for its drinking song sing-a-long qualities and the way it instantly made me feel like I was in the middle of a field at a music festival somewhere.
I was listening to “Hey, All You Hippies!” again this weekend and after doing some digging around found footage from when The Low Anthem stopped by KCRW last year after SXSW. Worth mentioning in their performance was their live version of “To The Ghosts Who Write History Books” from Oh My God, Charlie Darwin in which one member plays the singing saw while another plays the clarinet. It’s well established that bands with multi-instrumentalists make me weak in the knees and the use of these instruments for this song gave a hauntingly beautiful result that is no exception.
You can stream their entire Morning Becomes Eclectic performance from last year on demand here.
I’m happy to report that The Low Anthem are now actively touring with their latest album and will be making a stop by The Autry at Griffith Park on Monday, May 9th. There are still tickets available and if they plan on pulling anything like the below trick (about 3 and a half minutes into this great song), you can bet I’ll be there!