Hell on Church Street in Bloomington, MN

Punch Brothers
' fifth album,
All Ashore
, was a typically eclectic, if somewhat intimate album that examined the complexities of maintaining relationships amid the social chaos of the late 2010s. Ambitious almost to a fault, the quintet has made a career out of creating complex song suites, taking stylistic left-turns, and arranging their music with a virtuosic fervor that leaves little doubt about their collective talent. Released in an entirely new era of tumult, 2022's
Hell on Church Street
marks something of a return-to-roots for the band, albeit in their own peculiar fashion. Singer/mandolinist
Chris Thile
has always insisted that
are, at their core, a bluegrass outfit and on their sixth album, they honor one of their greatest influences, the late bluegrass guitar legend
Tony Rice
. Billed as a "reimagining, and homage to"
Rice
's 1983 solo album,
Church Street Blues
,
is a song-for-song tribute, played with elegant restraint and some creative interpretation. That
's album was itself a set of covers from such well-known artists as
Bob Dylan
Gordon Lightfoot
, and
Bill Monroe
makes the
' version a sort of twice-distilled tribute to the original material.
Consisting almost entirely of just voice and guitar,
's album paired a sense of breezy warmth with the impeccable precision that was one of his hallmarks. In tackling the
Norman Blake
-penned title track,
magnify the dreamier aspects of
's arrangement, spinning it off into a tender bluegrass fantasia. Likewise, their loose and fluttering take on
Ralph McTell
's classic "Streets of London" is appealingly subtle, as is their quietly percussive version of
Tom Paxton
's "Last Thing on My Mind." They allow themselves to break loose occasionally, especially on the
Jimmie Rodgers
romp "Any Old Time" and parts of the haunting traditional ballad "House Carpenter," but precision and restraint remain both
' superpower and Achilles' heel. The set closes with
's epic maritime ballad, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," which, try as they might, they just can't land. It's a tough song for anyone but its author to sing convincingly, and as is often the case,
Thile
's voice is just too clean to do it much justice. As far as
albums go,
is a bit of an odd bird in that it's an album of covers chosen by someone else. As a nod to
, however, they honor his spirit well enough. ~ Timothy Monger