Customer Reviews

Punch

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Imagine this scenario, because this is what you may feel like during your first few times listening to this masterpiece.

You are part of a moving audience on a barge on a river floating past dozens of the best string bands ever formed.

Each band plays a different form: bluegrass, new grass, classical grass, Stravinsky, Mozart, chamber music, toe tapping, melancholic.

You hear something you really love and you want to stop. But the barge keeps moving.

There will be many for whom this experience is too strange to really get it.

But this band is so totally amazing and the playing is so good, you should not want to miss it.

Once you get to the 7th or 8th time through, and listen to the lyrics more carefully, you will begin to see the logic, the classical structure, the repetition of themes. The composer moves between mourning and hope and the music follows the emotion.

One thing that is consistent in the album is the excellent, infrequent, very focused singing on the part of Chris and the band. The singing is an accent and a sort of narration for your journey down the river. There is no whining or harsh notes. It's quite beautiful.

It's also notable that this is not a band backing Chris on the Mandolin. It is highly integrated and features the banjo (Noam Pikelny) and violin (Gabe Witcher) in many of the segments.

Chris actually plays more of a supporting role musically. Gabe Witcher's soulful and soaring fiddle is really the voice of much of the music. But the rest of the time, the 5 play as one. The dynamics are stunning, often swooping from raging bluegrass down to whisper soft fast picking and then back again.

So what is it about? No, it's not just about Thile's divorce. Like several of his other records, this CD is about the intersection of love, faith, loss and growing up musically brilliant, but socially late. This provides a rather small audience of people who will understand. How many "absolute genius, Christian prodigies who didn't start dating until nearly 20 and got their heart broken late in life (compared to most who got it out of the way at age 16)" people are there?

But that makes this record about something unique, very niche, not quite universal. Most people won't care what the record is about and just listen to the music. For those of us who have some part of a similar background, the meaning does connect with the music and brilliantly.

I'll admit it, I'm the first to consider myself somewhat of a music snob. I appreciate music with substance. My favorite albums are the ones that I didn't like the first time around, but grew on me as I appreciated the subtleties and nuances that tied them together.

I didn't like this album on first listen. It's certainly filled with enough subtlety and nuance, but after a few spins, it's not growing on me. I've listened to enough Nickel Creek and Thile's solo albums to appreciate Thile's skill at venturing out to the fringes of popular music generes, and bringing back with him interesting and surprising takes on music, but I think he may have ventured too far for most on this one.

The problem lies in his reliance on atonal music. It's very abstract-- it lacks context and is seemingly aimless wandering up and down the fretboard; the instruments all seem to be playing different songs. A great example of this is the first two minutes or so of Blind Leaving the Blind Movement 2. The album has some great melodic moments mixed in with the atonal. I particularly like the comparatively simple "Nothing, Then".

I don't doubt that this album is genius, I don't doubt that those more musically inspired than myself can truly appreciate this album. But as for me, it's over my head.

Update:

After several more listens, I have to admit it has grown on me somewhat, I do enjoy Movement 1, Movements 3 and 4 have their moments, but the album is indisputably melancholy, and is simply not the pleasure to listen to that Thile's albums have been.

I just saw The Punch Brothers at the Troubadour in Hollywood Feb 28. They played most of this CD. I was totally knocked out by the virtuosity of each member. The music is incredibly complex, but that did not get in the way of it being a helluva lot of fun to listen to and tap a toe to. These guys are exploding the boundaries of acoustic music. On one tune, I felt like I could have been in a small cafe in Paris, listening to acoustic jazz. Then off to a rip roaring hoedown in Nashville in the next piece. Lightning fast licks, and stop on a dime precision. Chris Thile should be a major pop star. He has the look, is able to engage in witty banter with the audience, has an incredible singing voice, and is probably the greatest mandolin player of all time. Yikes.

Copied from here: http://moultano.blogspot.com/2008/03/best-album-ive-heard-in-years.html

"Punch" is the second album from the newly renamed "Punch Brothers," their first being "How To Grow a Woman From the Ground." It's unclassifiable music, which clearly springs from bluegrass but with influences too numerous to count. It mixes the idioms and instruments of bluegrass with the complex harmonies of contemporary classical and jazz. I guarantee you've never heard anything like it. It makes Bela Fleck sound tame and traditional. Chris Thile, the frontman for the group has been called "the most virtuosic American ever to play the mandolin," and the other members of the group receive less effusive praise only because their instruments are more common. Here they are put to good use playing things that have never before been played on these instruments.

The meat of the album is contained in a bewildering, four movement, forty minute piece entitled "The Blind Leaving the Blind." Despite the length and the stretches of dissonance, it's never inaccessible for long; the lyrics and melodies stay rooted in telling the emotional story of Chris's recent divorce. Every so often they break into an old-fashioned bluegrass jam, but then change keys in a few measures to remind you what you are listening to. On my first pass through it was exhausting to listen to, and it was a stretch for the band as well.

"For me, when I first received the score and saw what Chris was asking me to play on my instrument, that had to have been just as traumatic as him getting his divorce papers," Pikelny says. "He figured, 'Hey, if you have the notes there, you'll figure out a way to play it.'"

Chris Thile's voice, though adequate, doesn't match the quality of the playing and composition, and the album suffers from what I call "Great Album Syndrome." (Every truly great album must have one unbearable song, i.e. "The Crunge" or "Fitter Happier." On this album it's the first track, "Punch Bowl.") However, if hearing a banjo in a song doesn't immediately turn you off, (I understand that excludes a fair number of people) then give this a listen.

I think the best word to describe this album is beautiful. No, it is not traditional bluegrass. There is bluegrass on this album, but there is also pop, blues, classical... I think Thile shows an incredible talent for composition on this album. This is not background music. This is music that you put on in the dark and just listen to. Soak yourself in it like a warm bath. It's going to take more than one listen to get into this album, but I maintain that it will be worth it.

If you'd like to hear what happens when a (primarily) progressive folk composer, a man used to shooting off five-to-ten minute pieces, tries his hand at a mature work of 40 minutes, give this album a listen.

I've seen the tour supporting the show and I love the album. It's interesting to see how a multi-movement work will translate into a tradition full of short, repetitive tunes, but I really admire the guts here. He really achieves a mood here, and if you're really floundering for something to latch onto, try to focus on how he moves from section to section within the piece.

I'm sorry not everyone here enjoyed it, though I've learned not to waste my breath when it comes to defending music of the avant-garde persuasion. ("Trying too hard to be different"? Whatever that means. They made an experimental album, end of story.) Not that Chris has ever exactly courted the traditional bluegrass community--I mean, let's be realistic here.

It's been really awesome to watch Chris Thile mature as an artist over the last several years. Punch shows him at the top of his game with a line-up of incredible musicians that I think will be the heirs to the thrones of Bela Fleck, Mike Marshall, Edgar Meyer, Jerry Douglas and the rest of that crowd. This record really illustrates the eclecticism of Thile's musical tastes and influencing, ranging from bluegrass, to bebop to Bartok. Expressive orchestration, innovative compositional techniques and explosive technical playing saturate this record. This disc is full of energy and top notch performance.

The only trouble some might experience with this album is that some may feel that there is just too much to take in. Think about if King Crimson played acoustic folk instruments instead of the typical rock band arsenal. Especially with the epic, 4 part, 42 minute suite, The Blind Leaving the Blind, some may simply become overwhelmed with the complexity of Thile's writing. Some may feel that Thile has written the musician's music. I've always been a sucker for musicians outside of the classical music world trying to write music that is similar in scale and artistry of a great symphony, and I think that the Punch Brothers have done exactly what bands like Genesis, Dream Theater and Spock's Beard have done in the progressive rock world. This is progressive acoustic music (I hesitate to call it progressive bluegrass), and it has progressed far beyond where anyone has tried to take it before. So if you're up for a challenging listening experience, start at the Punch Bowl and keep going. The epic work may take a few listens, but if you give it a chance, I think you will find it incredibly rewarding.

With each fresh album and tour, a renewed addiction rears its beautiful head. Four days after making a 320 mile round trip to to see Punch Brothers in Santa Barbara, I retrospect. I'm listening to PUNCH, researching Chris Thile's flawless band mates (my ears fall deeper in love), and proselytizing anew to friends, family, and accidental victims (you included).

Chris Thile and this newly minted troupe of preternatural craftsmen will take you to atmospheric highs and crushingly emotional lows with this sickeningly good album. I mean sickening...like so much of Thile's previous work, I am viscerally affected by these new songs.

I have warned that people prepare themselves for the consequences of listening to Chris Thile's music...and I still warn. Your heart near explosion, you will weep. (Or at least you should want to weep, certain if you don't you might die from some affliction of fullness that has crescendoed to nearly unbearable. Of course, Thile is a master and bestows relief at the exact moment it's needed.) There is hardly a physical expression of emotion that won't strain to free itself at the listen.

Thile and his talent may never enjoy a deserved volume of approbation, but from those who have followed him and are grateful for his musical contributions, there is an ever present chorus of conviction, "This is important music."

If a person does not appreciate this artfully composed and brilliantly played music, no words will shed light into that very dark corner. And if a person can't find a way to love and be moved by this album, I am so sorry for them, for they are missing one of the great joys of being in life with Chris Thile.

Listen to this music, abide in it, and share.

This work is like a well prepared pot pie. A little bit of bluegrass, folk, alternative and neo-classical (experimental). The musicians are excellent and that is what gets this four stars.
I see this as a developmental stage for Chris Thile leading possibly into more complex, innovative, and masterful work(s). There are interesting sections, a few songs thrown in the longer instrumental piece which could stand on their own, and always great playing from the band.
Now before other reviews stay I don't appreciate what he is trying to do, heck I am from TN, let me that I listen to many types of music including experimental and "neo." (Even Newgrass).
Then what am I looking for? To understand what can be done with strings, and what I think Chris Thile is capable of, hence I see this as a developmental work, listen to the Kronos Quartet, Frank Zappa, Philip Glass, Terry Riley, or the works of the people they have performed other than their own.
If I could order his next 5-10 cds in advance, I would.

I am attracted to artists who cross musical genres and create a unique sound. Bluegrass meets classical meets folk meets blues. The Punch Brothers forge ahead into new musical territory with the same fearlessness as supreme artists Bela Fleck and Edgar Meyer. Chris Thile's 4 part piece "The Blind Leaving the Blind" is spellbinding and beautifully lush with complex themes. Chris has brought together a group of fabulous musicians who can match his high level of precision performance and artistry. Punch is a groundbreaking piece of work. The entire CD presents a cohesive landscape of ideas and feelings that delights from beginning to end.