Day 16
Punch Brothers - The Phosphorescent Blues
Not the first time I have said this, but this is the best album of the Century and ranks in my top 10 all time. I had really only been listening to the band for about four months when this came out. I had missed Nickel Creek (a story I’ve also told where many people tried to get me to listen to them but I confused them with Nickelback and thought my friends were high) when they came along and only became aware of this band when songs from the album previous to this had become common place on NPR. They did a piece on that album in November of 14 and I became obsessed, owning their entire catalog by the time this hit in March of 2015.
It simply blew me away and knocked Wilco out of my favorite working band slot (a spot it had firmly held since YHF blew me away).
It’s progressive bluegrass, if you aren’t familiar. A lot of the music that I talk about incessantly comes from the larger scene surrounding Chris Thile and this band.
Progressive bluegrass isn’t like prog rock where it is noodling for noodling sake. It often takes the form of clear cut bluegrass music with the kind of hooks and word play you would expect from alternative rock. These guys can unironically cover The Strokes and Radiohead and sound fucking fabulous doing it. I try to see this band every time they come my way (Kamasi and Kishi are the only other artists that get this kind of devotion for me). They blow me away live every time and usually bring along someone to become a new obsession for me (I discovered Aoife O’Donovan and Madison Cunningham when they opened for these guys).
This album is a quasi (aren’t they all?) concept album about how modern life with its information and pocket computers eats away at our souls… the titular phosphorescence coming from the glow of our phones.
If I ever pitch a 33 1/3 it will probably be about this album which has in almost every possible way dictated a lot of my listening for 9 years now.
I almost played its follow up the other day as a favorite’s worst album. It is in no way a bad album but it was highly disappointing following this album and remains the group’s low mark to date. A band that had constantly pushed itself and expanded the boundaries of what is possible with acoustic music reached its apex with this breathtaking album.
