Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, the second record from Providence-based The Low Anthem, was recorded “in the ghostly stillness of a Block Island winter” — and it sounds like it. There’s a nearly equal mix of the impulse to give in to that ghostly stillness and to rage against it.

Low Anthem co-founder Ben Knox Miller says of Charlie Darwin, “I think we pushed the hard things a little harder and made the soft things a little softer. The poles and the swings are a little wider” as opposed to their previous record, What the Crow Brings. Sure enough, the gentle lull of the title track and the loud raunch of “The Horizon Is a Beltway” and “Home I’ll Never Be” (a cover with lyrics by Jack Kerouac and music by Tom Waits) make for a striking contrast.

Miller and his band mates are embarking on their biggest tour yet for this record — 30 shows in 16 states in 28 days — and have gotten some rave reviews. The Boston Globe, for example, called the group “wise beyond their years” (they’re all in their early 20s) and the record a collection of “superbly crafted, grandly eloquent songs.”

One of the words that gets thrown around a lot with The Low Anthem is “Americana.” And yes, there are lyrics about railroad lines and evil women, but their music goes into many weirder spaces than that, or the recent New Folk movement.

“I love the word ‘Americana’,” Miller says, “but I think a lot of people understand it differently than I do. When I think of Americana, I think of Elvis and old stuff that you find at antiques stores — the icons of the American culture. I don’t associate it with pretty music or folk music, which I think a lot of people do. . . . Neil Young is Americana; Elvis is Americana; Tom Waits is Americana. It’s a very formless genre as far as I’m concerned.”

Miller writes most of the songs on guitar, then runs them by Jeff Prystowsky, his co-writer, who makes suggestions and changes. Then it’s off to show the songs to the rest of the band in a “musical chairs” situation.

“Arranging is such a big part of our sound,” Prystowsky says. “We’ll sit down and write the songs, but then we enter the room full of instruments, and everybody takes something and sees what we can do with them. And if it doesn’t work — a song will be a ballad and then it’ll be an up-tempo number. And it’ll go through different styles — it can be raw and electric and crunchy-sounding, and then we’ll change it up and it’ll be smooth, with three-part horns and an organ.”

There are 27 instruments on Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, and that can make for a pretty cramped van, Miller says. “There’s only one way everything fits; it’s like a real-life game of Tetris. If you jump the gun and put the pump organ in too early, the whole thing can’t happen.”

Miller says that six or eight songs for this record “all happened at the same time,” and he added a couple of older songs that fit in thematically.

That theme? Well, it’s a little complicated.

It’s about “Darwinism driving the evolution of values, and not being grounded in a set of absolute values,” Miller says. “. . . I became obsessed by this idea of Darwinism for a while . . . the idea that the powerful crushes the weak, and that these are the values that live on. And while species are evolving, our morals and ethical codes are evolving too, depending on which [idea] has legs. . . .

“Am I making any sense?”

Um, yeah. It’s kind of a political record without being political, right?

“Yeah. Just that tension between how basic it is to crave that sense of community, or common sense of purpose, and all the doubts that the last eight years makes so obvious. Getting into where we got these values from, and by what authority should we care about them.”

In two years, the band has gone from a trio to a duo to a trio to a quartet, with Miller and Prystowsky now joined by Jocie Adams and Cyrus Scofield.

Miller plays mostly guitar, Prystowsky bass, Adams clarinet and Scofield drums, but Prystowsky says everyone plays more than one instrument and fills more than one role.

“We don’t really have one sound in mind that we’re going after, and are looking for the right members to fill that sound. We play in one arrangement until we hit a wall, and then [think] what can we do? …We’re a constantly evolving sound, as we acquire new instruments, hear new music that excites us, and find opportunities. We click with [new members] in terms of their lifestyle and when they play with us, do they listen? It’s not a traditional rock thing to listen to each other and feel things out and play very subtly, but so many of our songs are gentle. So we need players in the band who can feel that out. You’ve got to be able to get loud and soft.”

And the willingness to tour constantly is important.

“We’ve just always toured,” Prystowsky says. “We’d play at an open mike at a club, and then they’d book us on a Tuesday, and then on a Thursday, and then we’d open for one of their bigger acts.”

He adds that the one-show-at-a-time approach to building an audience has worked.

“We start off, and we’re playing the best we can, but we’re playing for two people at a coffee shop. And you play the same exact set, and — sometimes I play with my eyes closed, so I don’t think about it, but I open my eyes and it’s a year later and there are 50 people, and then there are a hundred people.”

The Low Anthem celebrate the release of Oh My God, Charlie Darwin tomorrow night at Firehouse 13, 41 Central St., Providence, at 8 p.m. Annie Lynch and the Beekeepers and Ben Pilgrim and the Free Union Band are also on the bill. Call (401) 270-1801 or go to www.firehouse13.org.

The Low Anthem are also at the Narrows Festival of the Arts, an all-day event in and around the Narrows Center for the Arts, 16 Anawan St., Fall River. They go on at 11:30 a.m.

And as if that wasn’t enough, they’re at Evelyn’s Drive-In, 2335 Main Rd., Tiverton, along with Ben Pilgrim, Allysen Callery, Kim Lamothe, Christopher Moon, Chris Rosenquest, Talking About Commas, Anne’s Cordial, Vanessa Sylvia, Mark Cutler, Russ Mello and Jacob Haller, headlining a folk-blues throwdown that goes from noon to 9 p.m. Call (401) 624-3100.

That Narrows Center shindig looks like a winner, by the way — get there for The Low Anthem, but stay for the no-nonsense singing and songwriting of Jim Lauderdale, the sacred funkiness of The Holmes Brothers and a whole lot more. Call (508) 324-1926 or go to www.ncfta.org.

Not that there’s a shortage of festivals hereabouts:

The Pawtucket Arts Festival zydecos with Buckwheat Zydeco and Slippery Sneakers tomorrow night at the Slater Mill Historic Site, 67 Roosevelt Ave., Pawtucket, at 6 p.m. Tickets are $10 advance; $15 at the gate, children under 10 free. Call (401) 621-6123 or go to www.arttixri.com.

And the Providence Waterfront Festival slams into the area around the Hot Club and the Fish Co. in Providence. The Walkmen, Elvis Perkins and Deer Tick headline tomorrow night’s show at the Hot Club (575 Water St.) starting at 5 p.m. ($5 before 10 p.m., $10 after), and a Saturday day-night deal including the burlesque of The Danger Danger Birds, tribute bands Itchy Fish (Pearl Jam), Nevermind (Nirvana) and Synchronicity (The Police), as well as rock and R&B from The House Combo and Kris Hansen & Jon Tierney.

Call (401) 861-9007 or go to www.myspace.com/ hotclubwaterfrontfestival for the whole shebang.

The Mixed Magic Theatre’s Exult Choir presents a concert entitled “The Greatness of Gospel: Down by the Riverside,” a concert celebrating the iconic significance of the river in African-American and gospel-music history, Saturday and Sunday nights at their home base, 171 Main St., Pawtucket, Saturday and Sunday nights at 7:30. There are some new members in the choir this time around, but they’ve always been the real deal, so off you go. Tickets are $5; call (401) 305-7333.

Last week I wrote that Greg Abate teaches at the Community College of Rhode Island. He teaches at Rhode Island College.

rmassimo@projo.com