Hello.
I will offer a few thoughts on last night’s show, after offering the caveat that I wasn’t there and haven’t listened to the whole thing.
What I have heard was less than inspiring. Not every show is a winner. That’s fine. The band still comprises human beings, human beings in their late 50’s, human beings who get tired and have off nights the way we working stiffs have off days at our jobs.
Because that’s what this has to be to phish sometimes: a job. The hard truth is sometimes you don’t do absolutely as well as you could at your job, and it sounded like phish took a bit of an emotional night off last night.
Simple is always a cool call for an opener. For as often as trey leads a minor key rager into happier pastures, here he decided to guide the simple jam into minor territory, where it really puddled into an unconvincing “>” into camel walk. Jibboo was honestly one of the highlights for me. ASIHTOS is getting most of the copy. This is probably because it was one of the three or four real jams of the night, and by far the longest. It started strongly enough, convincingly plowing through the anger and desperation that the finest versions of this song tend to evoke (SPAC ‘04, etc). About halfway through, Trey sounded absolutely exhausted, musically speaking. Inevitable major key modulation, then a tiny reprieve into the darkness before waddling into Light.
God most definitely curses those who dare to disagree with the jam chart overlords, but I’m not convinced, with extreme prejudice, that this version deserves to stand next to the greats. My opinion doesn’t matter on this point too much, but there it is anyway.
The howling and Suzy exhibit the type of energy you wish would be present for the entirety of every phish show, but, as above, that Is not accepting life on life’s terms.
If anything, last night’s show exposed phish’s greatest weakness as a touring act: being able to come out and string together two sets of well played songs without any deep, 20+ minute jams. This is ideally what they would do if they were not feeling the improvisational magic, but songs like casual enlightenment and the bevy of new material they’ve been playing this tour simply don’t meet that simple criterion: they aren’t solid songs.
Very few shows will ever sink to the depths of Grand Prairie 16 or Charleston3 19, but this is as close as a show has come in a long time.