Punch Brothers / The Bills: profile

18 January 2008

A 5 and a half hour drive battling gales and torrential rain saw me land in Glasgow's Old Fruitmarket (It's exactly that - a gorgeous building) with 15 minutes to spare. After finding our very own George,who had left fair Edinburgh for the gig, we managed to get seats where you'd didn't have to be a size zero to actually get into them. They were about three-quarters of the way back, but the view and sound were good.
I enjoyed the Bills - good playing, lively and melodic roots music from all over the show - and a band who know how to work an audience. I shall definitely check out more of their stuff.
The two Chris Thile solo shows that I saw about 15 months ago were amongst the best I've ever seen, so it was a no-brainer to come all of this way, especially as he wasn't playing anywhere nearer. The start of the set augered well - two storming songs from the last CD and a song that didn't make the cut for the forthcoming Punch Brothers' CD.... Talking of which, it was at that point that things then went badly wrong - we, the audience were "treated" to all four movements "that form the core of our new CD"...oh dear. As George put it "They sound like a bluegrass 'Yes' " As I put it - "A bag of wank". If you like musicians noodling in an atonal, jam band hippy way for a very long time, then you'd have loved it. It was shite. Fortunately, the band did do some other, better "proper" songs at the end and it was different again - a great cover of "Baby's in Black" and a fiery version of "Wayside back in time". It seems as though Mr Thile and his muso mates have been spending too much time in each other's company trying to be clever and I think they need someone to remind them that musical discipline is a virtue...because when they do exercise restraint and develop structure, they're awesome. Rant over. I got back in at 5am. There are some picks taken at the long end of a 300mm so they're OK, but not as good as I'd have liked.

information - contributor 'nick'