About seven years ago, I was thumbing through the folk aisles of the local record shop and came across a record that made me laugh. It was a cruel sort of laugh, born out of my own pubescent insecurities. On some level I knew this, but I laughed anyway. The disc was plucked from its spot far back on the shelf: a spot that no artist wanted, no record-store clerk could ever find to restock, and no customer would entertain. The disc was placed face up, resting next to its old home. I didn't even have to listen to it. On the cover, smiling up at me, was a portly young boy hovering over the home plate of Wrigley Field.
It gets better. He was dressed in a Chicago Cubs uniform with his mandolin cocked behind his head in a batter's stance. At first, I found this hysterical. Then I grew perturbed. The instant pleasure that I drew from this wicked humor was instantly spoiled by a sudden realization. Somebody had found this first, found it funny first, and left it for me: the table scraps of someone else's good find. At this age, I hated nothing more than following trends. Look at me. I had refused Barnes and Nobles and chosen the hipster record store. I resented the top shelves, and frequented the most hipster of all genres: folk. It had never occurred to me that the hipster before me had left the album out for any other purpose besides sheer mockery. I was laughing, so he had to be laughing as well.
At some point, I listened to it. I stopped laughing. I feverishly checked the cover then the disc, then the cover again, thinking that in some mix-up, the disc that I was hearing was not this chubby, 11-year-old boy in a Cubs uniform. But it was. It sounded like nothing I had ever heard before. He was a freak of nature: a man-boy of the mandolin, playing with the confidence and bravado of a seasoned vet. The absolute virtuosity of Chris Thile couldn't have hit me with that first listening. However, standing in my highly calculated outfit, in the hipster record store, I was hit by an entirely different sensation. I was, all at once, enraged at the unfairness of his skill and grateful to have been lucky enough to catch it. I laughed then, but he is laughing now.
The last four years have been good to Chris Thile. Very good. As the front man of Nickel Creek, he found a new and creative way to infuse rock and bluegrass by playing his mandolin much more like a guitar than a mandolin. He finds a way to get more sound out of his instrument than anyone else in the genre. In 2005, Nickel Creek produced "Why Should the Fire Die," their masterpiece. Featuring producers and writers like the famed Gary Louris, "Why Should the Fire Die" is a haunting work of genius that infuses the technical skill of trio and the harmonic quirk of Thile. Unlike other Nickel Creek albums, this album boasts a harmonic weirdness that jettisons it out of any one genre. "Eveline," the album's seventh track, is a fusion of American bluegrass and Whitacre-esque chorale chords, while "Scotch and Chocolate" (instrumental) is exactly what you'd expect of the prodigy: awe-inspiring bluegrass solos. The album never feels pretentious or stilted, because beneath all of its weirdness and technicality are beautiful melodies with lyrics to match. Although the album was completed five years ago, it predicts Thile's musical departure from his pop style into a sound that is all his own.
In 2006, with a new band and a new suit, Thile released "How to Grow a Woman From the Ground." His band, the How to Grow a Band, consists of some of the best bluegrass players in the country. The bigger band and the new album showcased Thile's brilliant arrangements. Hidden between the entertaining bluegrass covers of White Stripes and The Strokes songs are the beginnings of Thile's brainchild. "The Beekeeper" and "Cazadero" are the prototypes of what is now being called "American country-classical chamber music," or as I like to call it, bluegrassical. These tracks are highly complex instrumental pieces that showcase both the simple beauty of traditional American folk melodies and the brilliance of Thile's writing. In this recording, he has not altogether abandoned his pop sensibilities. Tracks like "How to Grow a Woman from the Ground" and "You're an Angel and I'm Gunna Cry" are throwbacks to his Nickel Creek days.
The last two years have seen Thile's brainchild come to complete fruition. In 2007 he and his band, renamed Punch Brothers, debuted Thile's four-part suite, "Blind Leaving the Blind." Thile, after working us into it for four years, now has no problem calling a spade a spade and giving us his unadulterated bluegrassical chef-d'oeuvre. The result is astounding. Thile has, with this piece, changed bluegrass and folk music forever. Although this specific piece may not hold much historical sway, it has proved American folk music a legitimate contender on the world stage. "Blind Leaving the Blind" argues that bluegrass and folk possess the intricacies and complexities of any other form of performance music. Two weeks ago, Edgar Meyer, world-famous bassist, and Chris Thile released their collaborative effort "Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile." This all-instrumental album takes Punch Brothers' suite concept one step further. This album pushes the harmonic limits of the bluegrassical genre. Its uncommon time signatures, tone clusters, and difficult harmonic structures suggest that the bluegrass-folk style is more flexible than anyone could have imagined. Even with all of its astylar folk qualities, the songs of Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile are all reminiscent of their bluegrass ancestors in melody and instrumentation. If "Blind Leaving the Blind" aligns itself with a more traditional form of classical music, then Thile's latest album is the modern music equivalent of bluegrass.
Thile's work is remarkable in its skillfulness and prodigality, but is genius in its concept. He has transformed an American past time into high art and is decades ahead of his time. I predict that within 30 years, the genre of bluegrass-folk chamber music will become a national treasure like jazz, the Statue of Liberty, and the Chicago Cubs.