Antifogmatic
For those not in the know Punch Brothers are the band formed by former Nickel Creek mandolinist Chris Thile - for those of you who don't know who Nickel Creek were, they were the band that Punch Brothers' frontman Chris Thile used to be in. All clear? Good.
Almost 4 years ago when I left my job in music publishing to work for a mate's website, I was bought a mandolin as a leaving present. Good present. I slowly taught myself to play it and started looking around for mandolin players and mandolin-related stuff to listen to. I came across Chris Thile courtesy of the splendid Woodsongs Old Time Radio Hour podcast. Turns out he was promoting his new album How to Grow a Woman From the Ground so I hunted round and bought a copy. The band on that album turned into The Tensions Mountain Boys but nobody got the joke so they became Punch Brothers.
In 2008 I was reviewing CDs for americana-uk as a bit of a sideline and wanted to review Punch Brothers first album Punch. Despite requesting a review copy (twice) it never came so I downloaded the album from iTunes and reviewed it from that - it was one of only two 10/10 reviews I gave - the other may well be Disc of the Day at some point. Read the review here
Anyhow, here we are with Antifogmatic - if I could I'd give this 11/10 but I can't as that would be mathematically incorrect (plus I don't write reviews any more). This album has almost all the things that I love about classical music and opera and miss from time to time in popular music (for want of a better phrase to cover everything from Hank Williams to Iron Maiden - ie non-classical music). It has stunning variety of texture, colour, dynamic and touch of playing. Plus the songs are also incredibly, incredibly good.
There's nothing I don't like about this album and Missy has possibly the best instrumental break ever (courtesy of Gabe Witcher on fiddle).
Punch Brothers are my favourite band currently in existence on the planet.
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