Photo credit: Melissa Miller
At the point Punch Brothers played numbers about beer and baseball in their unassumingly triumphant set Thursday night at the Pabst Theater, banjoist Noam Pikelny declared the quintet on stage as “the people’s bluegrass band.”
Thereupon, the group launched into an adaptation of “Passepied” from French composer Claude Debussy’s piano work Suite bergamasque. Pikelny prefaced their launch into that piece’s intricacies by saying, “It’s like Miller time, only more impressionistic.” Yes, they’re the people’s bluegrass band if those people may have first encountered the music by way of, say, the collegiate, boozy approach of a band such as Horseshoes & Hand Grenades and are now seeking a greater aesthetic challenge. The two bands’ senses of humor, though manifested in markedly different manners, would doubtless be a bond by which they could get on with each other should they ever find themselves sharing a bill at Telluride or another festival specializing in their genre.
Punch Brothers are also, naturally, for lovers of acoustic music who have followed singer/mandolinist Chris Thile since he broached gold record sales with Nickel Creek at the turn of the century. Already now more prolific than Thile’s other on-again-off-again ensemble since their 2008 debut, the Punch Brothers can be heard as the group that has expanded upon Creek’s widening of bluegrass’ sonic palette. That widening comes not only via their addition of two more instruments beyond Nickel Creek’s trio lineup and being up to the challenge of reinterpreting Debussy and Radiohead’s "Kid A."
The group is also distinguished by a penchant for writing their own suite-like compositions, like a jam band with classical training, and the use of droning tones. The latter are largely provided by fiddler Gabe Witcher, but occasionally by acoustic stand-up bassist and Middleton, Wis., native Paul Kowert, who would bow his instrument. Those drones pepper numbers including “Movement And Location.”
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That wasn’t Thile’s only successful attempt to garner some chuckles. Haltingly insisting that “Magnets” is more about physics and not something more, ahem, carnal than theoretical merited some yuks. Ditto for his insistence that he and his bandmates had a fun time in Milwaukee earlier in the day even if it’s what every band says at every city they play. His amiably geeky persona and vocal style that doesn’t careen toward stratospheric tenor heights also places Punch Brothers as an act outside the main of ’grass convention—less high and lonesome than mid-range and complicated.
Thile’s ability to channel his romantic and philosophical musings into a musical voracity expressed inventively with acoustic instrumentation should continue to put Punch Brothers at the nexus where bluegrass, Americana, art music and pop meet. Thile’s sometimes awkward physical presence aside, they appear plenty comfortable there.
They also seemed comfy sharing the stage with their opening act. During one number, Gabriel Kahane joined the group for interludes of gibberish uttered with the cadence of a highly caffeinated voice-over artist. The singer/pianist/electric guitarist’s own set commenced the evening ruminating on children falling in the snow, “a charming little disease,” a dire Craigslist personal ad and, in keeping with the concept uniting his latest album, Los Angeles architecture. The combined effect was like a collision of Paul Simon’s reflectiveness, Randy Newman’s wryness and Tom Lehrer snarkiness, with dollops of jazz and classical instrumental chops. Kahane’s niche is more peculiar than many, but his kind of idiosyncratic screwiness deserves a wider audience.
