In this publicity image released by Nonesuch Records, members of Punch brothers, from left, Noam Pikelny, Gabe Witcher, Paul Kowert, Chris Thile and Chris Eldridge are shown.C. Taylor Crothers
O bluegrass, where art thou now?
The bluegrass isn't necessarily greener on the other side, but something is absolutely happening over there. When the "newgrass" Punch Brothers play a pair of Canadian concerts this week – Montreal Monday, Toronto Tuesday – a fantastical cover of the Radiohead track Kid A will likely be on the set list.
It's a reaction to (and a celebration of) what Thom Yorke and Radiohead were doing with their futuristic 2000 album (also titled Kid A), which was to move beyond six-string arena rock in sound and attitude, while foretelling the cold, overloaded computer age ahead of us.
This would have to appeal to Punch Brothers, the American progressive roots musicians who mix the hootenanny with the highfalutin, and who use mandolin, double bass, guitar, fiddle and banjo with no limitations.
The band's new album is Who's Feeling Young Now?, an adventure of sorts. Where Punch Brothers' previous Antifogmatic was a stripped-down effort recorded live in front of a Telefunken 251 microphone, Who's Feeling Young Now? features electronic delays and distortion, as well as multitracked vocals. Guitarist Chris Eldridge told Guitar World magazine that the band's five instruments were the only constants. "We weren't about to add drums or electric guitar, but everything else was open for intense re-arrangement."
Kid A, the song, has been covered before. The singer-songwriter and guitar-slinger John Mayer concentrated on the song's lullaby-like melody, stripping the composition of its watery, synthesized sonics, while deciphering Yorke's eerie, mutated singing.
Punch Brothers present Kid A with instruments only. Bassist Paul Kowert uses a bow to create a brooding mood and to simulate some of the vocals of the Radiohead original. The yowling skitter of fiddler Gabe Witcher supplies the whimsy and weirdness, Eldridge strums an elegant drone, banjoist Noam Pickelny plucks decoratively, and Chris Thile brushes his muted mandolin strings to produce a percussive scratch-board effect.
The cover recalls some the eclectic treatment by Toronto's New Country Rehab on its wild-eyed version of Bruce Springsteen's State Trooper, complete with a fiddle replicating a siren wail. New Country Rehab shares members with the Creaking Tree String Quartet, a foursome which, like Punch Brothers, incorporates improvisational jazz and classical forms into its repertoire.
In its approach and effect, Punch Brothers' Kid A is diametrically opposed to Mayer's cover. As Thile recently said: "I like the irony that the cover from the famous band is the most abstract thing on the record."
Where Thile appreciates the irony, other might welcome the purity. While Who's Feeling Young Now? sports some electronic aids, what Punch Brothers does in general is to drive home a point – that experimentation needn't require gadgetry, and that virtuosity, imagination and acoustic instruments alone offer endless possibilities.
Very similar to what Ontario bluegrassers Luther Wright and the Wrongs did with their unlikely 2001 hoedowning of Pink Floyd's rock opus The Wall (which they titled Rebuild The Wall), what Punch Brothers (and Bela Fleck, New Country Rehab and others) are doing is to vouch for bluegrass's thrilling versatility and endless horizons. To fiddle, then, is to investigate.
Punch Brothers play Toronto's Lee's Palace on Tuesday.
Brad Wheeler