I sat down ready to sing the praises of charming bluegrass quintet Punch Brothers, but based on the already considerable amount of exposure these guys have received for their new album, Who’s Feeling Young Now?, it seems my job has already been done for me. Thanks to a flawless performance on Late Show with David Letterman, a successful tour, and an abundance of raw talent, this group has effectively made the transformation from being a hidden gem of the bluegrass scene to a full-fledged sold out act. Think a softer, more down-home version of Mumford and Sons.
The warm and earnest vocals of lead singer (and former Nickel Creek member) Chris Thile on the single “This Girl” are enough to make you believe that God is indeed lending a listening ear to his prayers wishing for Him to “tell her it’s your will for us to be together.” Despite the Divine involvement in the song, the preceding lyrics “I would be the happiest backslider in the world” bring about the fun of rash decisions that this genre can often be the soundtrack for.
Instrumentally the band remains devoted to their traditional bluegrass style, consisting of a banjo, a guitar, a fiddle, a bass, and a mandolin. This commitment pays off, presenting listeners with a clean and fluent bluegrass style left unmuddied by the attempt to modernize such a time-honored form of music. They go together so seamlessly you can hear through the speakers how much these guys enjoy playing with one another — a key characteristic of good bluegrass music and a promising sign that the Punch Brothers are going to stick around.
You know i've always loved Jonk Music. The new look is great, but the songs linked to Amazon (at least) cannot play on exfm, thus cannot be sampled (heard) from your site. Also, on these particular entries, the empty space between the song info and the review is rather large. Just FYI. Or maybe it's me or Firefox?
I assume you mean Soundcloud, not Amazon. Soundcloud was down today, and naturally at the very same time the new look launched — which is why there were awkward white spaces on posts that have streams instead of downloads.
The Soundcloud links do appear in the exfm playlist at the lower-right corner (although oddly Punch Brothers is not; not sure why) but as of now these appear at the bottom of the list and not in post order. This glitch is on exfm's end and they tell me it will be fixed soon.
Not sure what you mean by the review being large, though. Could you take a screenshot and send it to me?
Thank you Anne, as always!