There’s creaking in the rigging, squeaking across the ship deck, an eerie sense of trepidation as—one by one—the Punch Brothers take the stage of Carnegie Hall, setting sail for unknown shores. Paul Kowert holds the bow of his double bass as if it’s a telescope and peers down the barrel into the middle-distance. Noam ‘Pickles’ Pikelny gazes out into the (imagined) mists settling over the audience, banjo by his side. Brittany Haas (violin) and Chris Eldridge (guitar), make their way past the stacked leather trunks, awaiting the arrival of Chris Thile: the captain of this very particular ship.
The last time that Punch Brothers were at Carnegie Hall, things were similarly nautical. Shouts of “ahoy!” were common in 2019 as they shared music from then recently-released All Ashore in a Nickel Creek double-header. A lot has changed since then, not least the band’s various adventures into more theatrical, structured territory. Chris has presented the one-man gig-show Manhattan Variations at Little Island. The band has fronted The Energy Curfew Music Hour, in a musical variety show format that has grown and honed muscles far beyond the plug-and-play of a conventional “gig” format. The stage entrance and accompanying atmosphere nods to this development in their stage show which feels as if it has more narrative and structure than before. And the music? Still as Punch-y as ever.
Opening with lyrics from Justin Vernon’s ‘Woods’, the band sing the phrase “I’m building a still / to slow down the time” and in doing so seem to cast a spell that does indeed transfigure time as we set sail together on their boat. This blends seamlessly into ‘New Bike’, the opening track of new fully-instrumental album The Unsung Adventures of Punch Brothers, complete with a Brittany Haas violin solo that has bounce in the bow and the knees. From here we take a turn into ‘It’s All Part of the Plan’ (featuring some joyful chromatic banjo picking) which culminates with a few “ahoys!” and Chris both preparing us for “unbridled jazziness” and the “frozen fog rolling in off the East River” which leads into new track ‘Found in the Frozen Fog’. “You look good, I think we look good too!” declares Thile after ‘This Girl’. This is the jaunty mutual encouragement that people come to Punch Brothers shows to experience and it fills the hall all night.
There are songs of the mystical, murderous water kelpie, the ill-fated voyage of the Annabel Lee, a tribute to Claude Debussy, and even a sea-shanty take on Sia’s ‘Chandelier’ which is presented as a “Sia shanty” (but of course). In the conceptual space that they’ve created in this show there’s room for punnery, duelling fiddles and even a re-working of the Jaws theme. That could seems scatter-gun, were it not for the care that’s been taken to slow down time and create a boat big enough for the audience to join the band wherever their imaginations take them. They end as they began: “I’m up in the woods / I’m down on my mind / I’m building a still / To slow down the time”. What a treat to slow down time and to spend that time with the Punch Brothers.
The Punch Brothers have just embarked on their tour (dates here).
