Punch Brothers - The Unsung Adventures of Punch

‘No band has expanded the reach of American roots and bluegrass quite like Punch Brothers have. Inviting new audiences to the music with their myriad influences, they’ve spent [two decades] ignoring the boundaries of genre and creating lush sound worlds. Long may they continue to tell their stories. - Songlines

The seventh album Punch Brothers - and its first comprising all instrumental tunes as well as its first with fiddle player Brittany Haas, who joined the quintet in 2023 - features eight new original compositions by the Grammy-winning band as well as three traditional songs they arranged. The album’s title is more than a play on words: without lyrics to guide the listener, these are stories, impressions, and emotions communicated entirely with strings through melody, harmony, rhythm, and a literary sense of musical structure. For a band known for pushing acoustic music into unexpected places, going fully instrumental may be the most adventurous move they have made yet. The Unsung Adventures of Punch Brothers is produced by the band and engineered by Joseph Lorge, who most recently received a Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album/Non-Classical for his work on Pino Palladino and Blake Mills’ That Wasn’t a Dream.

Recorded at Guilford Sound Studio in Vermont last fall and winter, The Unsung Adventures of Punch Brothers is an album of music without words. Thile, who founded the band in 2006, says, “This music is the result of what feels to me like our deepest but also most joyful exploration of the American string band in the twenty years we’ve been making music together. Something about the dichotomy of all the water under the bridge plus a new, brilliant teammate in Brittany. We all felt like kids in a candy store … so many possibilities and so much energy with which to pursue them, except with the kind of collective discipline and clarity of intent that only decades of collaboration affords.”

Tracklist