The Low Anthem and their forthcoming album, Smart Flesh, out this Tuesday on Nonesuch, are the subject of a feature article in the New York Times. In the article, the band joins Times writer David Carr in a walk through the abandoned pasta sauce factory in Central Falls, Rhode Island, where they recorded the new album and which became a central figure in the album's sound.

On Smart Flesh, "the factory is one of the instruments," Carr explains. "The resonances of the place leak through on every song. Sounds are shaped by high ceilings and tall windows, reverbs that are bounced around and come back altered."

Emmylou Harris, a label mate and onetime touring partner, spoke with the Times about the band and their willingness to go beyond what others might expect of a young band in their position.

“I don’t even know if they know that what they are doing is brave,” Harris tells the Times. “In a way they are harkening back to parlor music with those instruments, some of which I don’t even recognize. They have a strange and wonderful repertory, and their ensemble singing is haunting and beautiful.”

As unique as their approach is, Carr says:

There is nothing idiosyncratic about what underlies their appeal: The songs are sticky and gorgeous, often because of Mr. Miller’s fungible, memorable voice. On “Matter of Time” a breathy organ comes in and out while Mr. Miller sings out, sweetly and sadly, seemingly from a great distance while a harmonica refrain comes in from another direction. You can hear the echoes of the big room the music was made in.

Read the complete article and watch the video for the album track "Boeing 737," filmed at the factory, in its world premiere at nytimes.com.

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The band launches its tour next Thursday at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue in Washington, DC. Washington Post staff writer Moira E. McLaughlin spoke with the band's Ben Knox Miller in advance of the tour. Miller discusses meeting band co-founder Jeff Prystowsky at Brown University, with whom he discovered a shared interest in "thinking outside the musical box," as McLaughlin writes, and fellow band mates Jocie Adams and Mat Davidson.

Miller goes on to discuss the aforementioned factory and the integral role it played in the making of the new album.

"The building was the instrument," Miller tells the Post, "and the songs that worked were the ones that respected its speed and its mood and the way that the sound would return."

Read the article at washingtonpost.com.

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In the UK, where the album is out on Bella Union on Monday, the Independent gives the album four stars and also notes the role of the space in which it was recorded.

"There's an eerie, otherworldly atmosphere to much of The Low Anthem's follow-up to 2009's enchanting Oh My God, Charlie Darwin that's due in large part to the circumstances of its recording," writes reviewer Andy Gill, "the band opting to use a deserted factory in Rhode Island in preference to a more soulless professional studio environment."

Gill goes on to say that the band's "textural palette is broader than ever on Smart Flesh" and, lyrically, finds "love, death and regret stalk these songs like lost souls seeking their final rest."

What's more, the through-line running through the vast majority of the album offers "the kind of stylistic and atmospheric unity that reminds one of what albums can offer that no other format can match."

Read the review at independent.co.uk.

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The Guardian's Maddy Costa says the abandoned factory-cum-recording space "makes every note thrum as though transmitted to the living world from some eerie limbo inhabited by spirits and shadows. The effect is as bewitching as it is chilling ..." Read the review at guardian.co.uk.

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To reserve a copy of Smart Flesh on vinyl, CD, and in a deluxe edition, head to the Nonesuch Store, where pre-orders include an instant download of the opening track, "Ghost Woman Blues," and a limited-edition poster autographed by the band, plus high-quality, 320 kbps MP3s of the complete album available on release day.