Sign up to The Irish Times Archive (1859 - 2008)My Account »

Their old-school Americana may be rooted in another time, but for The Low Anthem’s Ben Knox Miller, making music is all about keeping things fresh, he tells LAUREN MURPHY

IT ALL began in the early hours of the morning. Ben Knox Miller, a visual artist from New York, and Jeff Prystowsky, a jazz aficionado from New Jersey, shared a love of baseball, music and shooting the breeze from 2am to 5.30am on weekdays at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. The pair took the graveyard shift at the Ivy League college’s on-campus radio station, and played in several bands of varying descriptions during the day. Little did they know that those college days would provide the foundations for The Low Anthem, a band who’d creep out of the woodwork in 2009 to international acclaim.