A Review of the Punch Brothers' Antifogmatic

posted by Jason Verlinde

As many Fretboard Journal readers know, we’ve long been fans of Chris Thile and the Punch Bros. Thile graced the cover of our now out-of-print 10^th issue when we had David Grisman interview him (here’s a link to the full interview in case you missed it); we geek out whenever we hear through the grapevine that a Punch Brother has bought a new piece of vintage gear (and they procure some of the best); and we look forward to their energetic live shows. Antifogmatic, their latest record, is my favorite PB product to date, challenging, a bit wild and yet utterly entertaining. The instruments may be the same ones you see at a bluegrass jam, but these are hard-charging, epic tunes that defy your usual banjo, guitar, mandolin and fiddle stereotypes. Line this album up in a playlist next to Steve Earle or Wilco or Leonard Cohen and it’ll somehow fit in.

On this album, the entire group seems to have benefited from finally living in the same city (New York). This music is so complex I don’t see how it could have been written out and Fed Ex’d to a bandmate, it had to be honed in a gazillion practice sessions. Jon Brion’s production captures their energy perfectly; this disc has the fidelity of a classical recording with the immediacy of a power pop album. There are great mandolin solos from Thile, as usual but, in typical Brion fashion, there are pretty little, almost-missed-them flourishes everywhere—window creaking sounds from the bass (or was it Gabe Witcher’s fiddle?), banjo solos from Noam Pikelny so delicate that you forget you’re hearing a banjo (really). It’s stuff that you only notice on the second or third listen. The devil is in the details and this album has a ton of them. I hear more music, and better playing, in the four minutes of “Woman and the Bell” than I usually do in an entire album.

Bluegrass offshoots usually scare me: they often lean so far into New Age territory that they are merely nice background music--some weird combination of Bill Monroe, Aaron Copland and elevator music. So I love that the Punch Bros defy that…they’re taking these instruments to new places and keeping us on our toes. Keep it coming, guys.