Punch Brothers w/Gabriel Kahane

×

Expand

All Ashore, Punch Brothers’ fifth album and the first to be self-produced by the quintet, is both ambitious and easygoing, a lot like the “ridiculously eclectic” combo, as London’s Guardian once called the band. The work has the feel of a nine-song suite, one that invites you to unravel the threads of its connected themes and stories over repeated listening. Each track segues seamlessly, even a little sneakily, into the next. Before you know it, “The Angel of Doubt,” a dark-night-of-the-soul drama featuring a vocal from singer-mandolinist Chris Thile, has glided into “Three Dots and a Dash,” an instrumental that veers from ruminative to rave up, named in tribute to a classic Tiki cocktail, Thile’s latest recreational obsession.