Who's Feeling Young Now? – Punch Brothers (2012)
Genre: Progressive Bluegrass
RYM Rating:
3.28
About damn time we got some more bluegrass! Though, uh,
progressive bluegrass? You wot, mate? Well let's see how it goes. FYI none of these are brothers, nor is the surname of any Punch, so why they chose that name I don't know. I do know we won't be listening to RYM's “kneejerk” who advises us to “just listen to the Kid A cover and ignore the rest”. Right. SoundscapeMN has a different view:
The 1st half sounds like par for the course for these guys, but the 2nd half the songs take different twists. "New York City" and it's epic nature probably stands out the most.
It's certainy different to the bluegrass I've heard, not that that's much. Kind of more like bluegrass pop: first song sounds like a-ha doing bluegrass. I feel this may be very much a watered down style of the genre, something like pop or (shudder) bro country? Lot of indie nonsense in here too. Not winning me over at the moment, guys! “No Concern of Yours” is a little better, but Earl Scruggs this ain't... Title track's quite annoying – plucking at a banjo or sawin' on a fiddle don't make it bluegrass, son. Yeah I got all excited when I saw bluegrass but this is, as they say, weak sauce. It's telling that the best and most authentic track on it is a cover of a song by a Swedish folk band. “Patchwork Girlfriend” sounds kind of like Tom Waits meets Strawfoot , which would probably please neither of them. Sigh.
Oh, and yeah, they do “Kid A” too, but I don't really care about Radiohead.
First time but here we go:
Three Thumbs Down.
Boo.
Shoulda listened to yer man kneejerk...
Decided to get a new icon. Guess what it means?
