The Phosphorescent Blues, René Magritte, and the End of Nostalgia
Album: The Phosphorescent Blues (2015)
Performer: The Punch Brothers
Cover art: René Magritte (1898–1967)
Cover Design: Evan Gaffney
Label: Nonesuch Records
In 2015 the Punch Brothers released The Phosphorescent Blues. On the cover of the album we see Belgian artist René Magritte’s provocative 1928 painting “The Lovers.” This image marks a shift away from the nostalgic aesthetic of the band’s earlier covers.
The Punch Brothers formed circa 2006 as a bluegrass band. During the 2000s, bluegrass and folk music enjoyed a popular revival in the wake of hit soundtrack to the Coen Brother’s film O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000). Acoustic folk and bluegrass music also resonated with a revival of “old-time,” quasi-19th-century styles that were popular in some circles during the 2000s and 2010s. (The fact that this is an identifiable “hipster” style is evidenced by Portlandia’s parody of the trend in the sketch/song “The Dream of the 1890s”). This retro-stylistic fashion trend follows aligned with the nostalgic interest in bluegrass and folk styles as “old-time” music.
On their first several albums, the Punch Brothers embrace elements of this visual nostalgia. Their debut album Punch (2007) makes a point to show the process of dressing in a suit with vest and suspenders (and visible pocket watch chain!); Antifogmatic (2010) features an illustration in the form of a steampunk chemistry set; and on the cover of Who’s Feeling Young Now (2012) the Brothers again appear in vests and suits in a black-and-white photo.
But are the Punch Brothers a throwback? Certainly the strictly acoustic instrumentation of the group suggests a commitment to pre-electric musical sounds. But in other ways the retro-stylistic elements on the album covers of the Punch Brothers contrast with their progressive musical aesthetic. It would be difficult to imagine the Punch Brothers headlining an old-time music festival. Instead the group offers listeners inventive songs that incorporate the formal and harmonic complexity of classical music and jazz and the Dionysian appeal of rock.
So what does the choice of René Magritte's image on the cover tell us about the shifting aesthetics of the Punch Brothers?
René Magritte: “Son of Man” (1964)
The 1964 painting “Son of Man” is perhaps René Magritte’s best known work. The painting could have been a rather banal image of a man in a suit, standing squarely in the viewer’s frame. But Magritte paints an apple—seemingly suspended—directly in front of the man’s face. The apple hides most of his facial features from view.
Jackson Pollock: “White Light” (1954)
(This was, incidentally, the painting featured on Ornette Coleman’s landmark 1961 album Free Jazz)
Many of Magritte’s paintings feature individuals whose faces are obscured, including “The Lovers,” the 1928 painting that on the cover of Phosphorescent Blues. Magritte is typically identified as a surrealist painter. There is an element of realism in surrealism. On the one hand his works are immediately understandable; there is no abstraction in terms of what objects are represented. Generally we know what things we are seeing in Magritte’s paintings, and the environments the paintings evoke look real enough. This is not a piece by, say, his contemporary Jackson Pollock, whose “splatter painting” style did not attempt to represent actual objects. On the other hand, what we’re seeing are things that we would never see in real life. An apple suspended in front of a man’s face or lovers kissing through canvas—these are not familiar images.
“The Lovers” is at once compelling and disturbing. The title of the work suggests romance and intimacy, and indeed the man and woman in the image are so closely intertwined that we see their jaws overlapping. But shrouded heads interrupt the physical connection between the kissing pair. The Phosphorescent Blues, according to Thile, is about the difficulty of in-person relationships in the age of digital technology, and it seems likely that this particular painting was chosen because of its representation of frustrated intimacy.
The episodic ten-minute opening track “Familiarity” addresses this theme most directly. Using religious imagery, the lyrics apparently describe a musical performance that momentarily connects individuals who had been stuck interacting with their phones. As we reach this moment of connection, the song builds until the texture is densely layered with multiple vocal lines (“God knows we mean it/God help us feel it”). Around the six-minute mark the spiritual ecstasy fades away as a contrastingly sparse and clear-headed texture emerges. The final stanzas reveal that phones remain a part of life after the experience. Nevertheless real human connection has also been achieved, even if it has not necessarily triumphed over the uncertainty of intimacy in a digitally mediated world—“I’m not sure where we'll go/To worship more than what we know/As long as you're there I won't be alone,” sings Thile as song concludes.
What makes Magritte’s painting so fitting for the album is that it is not willing to portray the storybook fantasy of intimacy separate from the reality of human frustration. At the same time, in rejecting these traditional notions of beauty, it chooses not to abandon familiar humanity altogether in favor of abstract forms (a la Pollock). Similarly “Familiarity” emerges from the spiritual highs of immediate human connection into a world still populated with phones that draw people away from physical connection. By choosing to accept this reality the Punch Brothers created an album that transcends the nostalgia that defined their earlier visual aesthetic. With Magritte, The Phosphorescent Blues asserts that mandolin, acoustic guitar, fiddle, and banjo speak not merely through nostalgic fantasies, but also in ways that resonate with the melancholy of modern life.
