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Punch Brothers: Antifogmatic

Nonesuch

In the world of acoustic music, mandolinist Chris Thile is arguably the most elastic and wildly imaginative player/singer/composer of his generation. He has met his matches in his fellow Punch Brothers: guitarist Chris Eldridge, Leftover Salmon banjo player Noam Pikelny, fiddler Gabe Witcher and bassist Paul Kowert. The Brothers’ latest outing is better than the best of all their worlds—channeling the boundless, intricate and none-too-brief chamber arrangements into a more song-focused approach like that of Thile’s first post-Nickel Creek album, How to Grow a Woman from the Ground. These 10 songs are exhilaratingly complex, but they’re also focused. Bait-and-switch time signatures give way to a sort of pre-war jazz in “Don’t Need No” while “Alex” conjures a sentimental ballad of the forty-something set and executes it with impossibly nimble stringed syncopation before giving way to postmodern power-pop.