The Low Anthem's European tour with fellow Rhode Islanders Brown Bird continues through next week with shows in the Netherlands, the UK, and Ireland and a final stop at London's 02 Shepherd's Bush Empire next Thursday. The quartet then returns to the States to hit the road with the Avett Brothers.

The Guardian's Stevie Chick, in a feature profile of the group, describes a recent performance as "a real barn-burner," with the band members "swapping instruments with giddy abandon, and ­rattling through a set-list that swayed ­between tender, harmonious folk songs and ramshackle rock 'n' roll with sweaty, unstudied authenticity."

Chick speaks with the band about its successful efforts to maintain that authenticity and a respect for timeless music without succumbing to the straight-out revivalist trend as some of their contemporaries have done.

"'We realised we shouldn't be too reverent towards our influences, that we should draw what we liked from the old songs,'" says The Low Anthem's Ben Knox Miller, "'but invest them with modern themes, and put something of ourselves in them.'"

Another influence from the past features prominently enough to be namechecked in the title of the band's Nonesuch debut, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin (out on Bella Union in the UK). The article suggests that even with the reference to a 19th-century author, the band maintains a far from antiquated sound. "It's the Darwinian darkness that gives the Low Anthem's songs a weight," says Chick, "saving them from being the relics they fear. Instead of essaying some nostalgic, soft-focus Americana, they write sharply about America itself."

Read the complete article at guardian.co.uk.

There's also a profile in the Irish Times in the lead-up to this Monday's performance at Vicar Street in Dublin. You can read that at irishtimes.com.

For tour information, visit nonesuch.com/on-tour.