Punch Brothers
When Chris Thile said goodbye to Nickel Creek last year, it was hard to know exactly what the mandolin virtuoso had in mind for his next move. But it was fair to expect that it would be something ambitious. Thile, after all, has been defying convention since he was a pre-teen mandolin champion, later leading Nickel Creek to genre-defying heights as the band occasionally covered the likes of Pavement and Coldplay, injecting a general sense of the alt-rock aesthetic into the bluegrass world.
Thile’s latest outfit, Punch Brothers, have turned out to be the fulfillment of Thile’s fans’ wildest dreams a band that is even more versatile and capable of following him wherever his musical ambitions lead. At this show, that included some pretty far-flung destinations, ranging from music by country cornerstone Jimmie Rodgers to that of alternative icons Radiohead. But the most astonishing music of the evening was actually penned by Thile himself.
Punch Brothers playing live for UK’s Telegraph TV, 7-08.
The first set featured short numbers from the group’s recent album Punch, including what Thile called the “pseudo title track,” “Punch Bowl”, in which the band was actually able to convey the sound of being drunk via their instruments. When the discordant last note sounded, banjo player Noam Pikelny joked, “We’d like to tell you the name of that last chord we played, but it’s a family show.”
The set also featured “Sometimes”, “Nothing, Then” and “It’ll Happen” from Punch, plus songs from Thile’s 2006 solo album How To Grow A Woman From The Ground, as well as a cover of Jimmy Martin’s straight-up bluegrass tune “Ocean Of Diamonds”. The band members’ feel for the material and for each others’ playing was astonishing, as Thile, Pikelny, guitarist Chris Eldridge, fiddler Gabe Witcher and new bassist Paul Kowert dexterously wove in and out of the mix.
The second set was given over to “The Blind Leaving The Blind”, a four-part suite about Thile’s crumbling marriage, which led to a re-evaluation of his faith. Far-reaching in scope and played with intensity and fervor, the piece ebbed and flowed for nearly an hour, shifting tempos and musical styles including bluegrass, jazz, blues and even hard rock: A section near the end of the third movement recalled nothing so much as Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog”.
The group finished the set with Rodgers’ “Brakeman’s Blues”, but the encore found Thile musing about Radiohead. “We could be a Radiohead cover band,” he said. “If not for gigs like this, we might be.” An audience member called out for “Paranoid Android”, which the band hadn’t worked up, but Thile started playing it anyway, the band falling in behind him as he called out chords. The song eventually collapsed and they played “Faust Arp” instead, which was just as jaw-dropping.
In the future, if the demand arises for a Radiohead cover band using bluegrass instrumentation, we’ll know who to call.
Punch Brothers cover Radiohead’s “Morning Bell” in Champaign, IL, 9-9-08.