The word virtuoso is applied far too freely. But it applies to any member of prog-grass quintet Punch Brothers.
The acoustic alchemy that fiddler/drummer Gabe Witcher, guitarist Chris Eldridge, bassist Paul Kowert, banjoist Noam Pikelny and mandolinist Chris Thile achieve on stage is both beautiful and truly unique.
From the opening notes of the reasonably well-attended performance at the Vogue Theatre on the Phosphorescent Blues tour, it was clear that there is compositional genius at play within the group’s ranks. Then again, Thile is a 2012 MacArthur Fellow, often called the “genius grant.”
Many collectives of killer players can descend into epic wankery and endless repetition, Punch Brothers pen pieces like Familiarity. The 10 minute-plus opening track from the new album encompasses all the group does that make it something so special. Thile opens with a high-lonesome vocal over a quietly cascading mandolin run echoed and built upon by Pikelny and Eldridge. The pace and intensity builds until Kowert bows in and the song goes from bluegrass to neo-classical and Witcher gets behind a drum kit and starts working the bass pedal while sawing out runs that rock. Another complete left turn and all five are harmonizing a cappella as the song enters another movement and on it goes.
So tight, so exquisitely played and the kind of music that could amaze everyone from an Earl Scruggs worshipper to a Dream Theatre fan obsessing about which pedals each member was using during their solos. It was hard to tell as they never try to make their instruments do anything they aren’t supposed to sound wise.
And they are funny.
“That was Boll Weevil Boll Weevil, an old piece about the Apocalypse,” joked Thile. “Now onto something by a less well known musician in fold circles, Claude Debussy.”
Besides Debussy’s Passepied, the band dropped in covers of Radiohead, bluegrass standards, The Auld Triangle from the soundtrack for Inside Llewyn Davis and even a tune from The Hunger Games. In other words, a setlist that represented how this combo straddles traditional bluegrass, folk, classical, indie rock and pop genres as well as jaw-dropping improvisation. Oh right, forgot gutbucket C&W too. The version of Through the Bottom of the Glass by Paul Keats gave guitarist Eldridge the chance to get all Buck Owens on everyone.
Everything seemed easy. None of it was. Rather this was the result of what happens when real musicians set to making real music live without an auto-tuner or soundboard trick in sight.
Almost certainly one of the year’s Top 10 gigs.
sderdeyn@theprovince.com
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