While last night might have been Phish’s first January 30th performance in their career, this is Phish’s 8th year playing Mexico and their 5th at the Moon Palace, playing here every year since 2020 other than the 2021 Covid break. Perhaps due to that repetition, this year’s attendance has felt lighter.

The Moon Palace is divided into 3 areas: Sunrise, Nizuc, and the more exclusive Grand that is walled off from the rest of the resort. While past years have had so much interest that Phish have had overflow attendees staying in the other local Palace resorts (Beach Palace, Sun Palace) and shuttled in, this year didn’t have that. Not only that, but there have been reports both anecdotal and via observation that people who had Nizuc reservations have been largely moved to Sunrise. Between my morning runs around the property where the balcony decorations drop off dramatically once you dip south of Sunrise, the massive increase of people without the Phish wristbands, and the direct report of at least one person to me that they’ve been moved, there does seem to be truth to this. The crowd does feels smaller this year and that has pros and cons.

As much fun as it is to take over a resort, it can feel a tad creepy to be in a foreign country surrounded, not just by Americans, but Americans of the exact same small subgroup as you. The crowd this year around the pool and in the restaurants seemed to have more actual Mexicans enjoying their local resort. Also, it’s led to more room in the venue section. The area by the Caribbean seems much emptier than in past years, and behind the soundboard under the cool shade of the palm trees, there is insane amounts of room. During the opening “Blaze On” last night, I moved close to the board for a second, turned around, and there was no one behind me until I saw my wife Mel some 10-20 yards behind. Behind her there was no one in the 100 yards to the food court. It’s definitely fun to spread out.

If there’s a con to losing the Nizuc, it’s that we used to have two pools. The Sunrise, an insanely large collection of pools linked by brief passages with bridges overhead for pedestrians, was floatie central. There, people would lie on wildly overcomplicated inflatable devices and let their stresses dissolve. In contrast, the smaller Nizuc was the party pool, with DJs galore. Moving the party to Sunrise seemed to mix the two vibes a bit, letting neither the afternoon party nor the naps happen in quite the same way, but it’s the price we pay for having shorter lines.

The opening night of the run on Wednesday---the Wednesday through Saturday scheduling has been throwing me off all week since the previous years I attended started the run on Thursday---felt like the prototypical warm-up show. There were some good peaks but it felt a tad disconnected. The second song on Thursday gave a reason for hope that we were on an upswing. “Plasma” has been played once before in Mexico, on 2/21/20 a show I also reviewed for this site. That show had a constant return to both “Plasma” and “Shafty.” [For other ZZYZX blog posts, check this link out. -Ed.]

We weren’t going to get that. In fact, they were so excited to get to the jam that they didn’t sing the second couplet. The jam itself was very pretty and serene. Maybe the pool was slightly less relaxing at times, but the “Plasma” felt like lying on the back of my eggplant flotation device, and letting the wind propel me where it would.

If there’s been one issue with the otherwise stunning weather on this year’s run, it’s been that the wind has been a tad on the excessive side, starting with the setbreak on night one. One of the pieces of art, red blobs hanging from a wire---allegedly inspired by piñatas but they looked more like pieces of meat to me---was swaying precariously on the first night. They added a second wire to the bottom overnight to stabilize it (at the expense of not having them flow so freely), but the one that looked like a lowercase i lost its dot * overnight.

Well, I assume that it was the wind... perhaps someone took the art a tad too literally and hit it with a stick.

Was “Back on the Train” performed as an excuse to sing its “howling wind” line? Maybe, but the lack of fellow wind songs “Windora Bug” or “Drift While You’re Sleeping” makes that slightly less likely.

References to the environment are fairly common with these beach shows. Between regularly changing lyrics to reference the locale and Phish’s many, many songs about water, we do get reminders as to where we are. One of the rarer relevant songs for the environment has been “Gumbo.” While it clearly references the downside to strolling on the beach---mainly uncomfortable sand and the dirty feet that can result from walking on it---it has been mostly ignored in Cancun. They finally realized the connection last year and it made a repeat performance in the middle of this first set, with an extra nice piano outro segment from Page.

After “Funky Bitch” ---and I wonder if there were any couples in the audience with different opinions over the validity of spending the money for Mexico who pointed to their significant other after the “She took all of my money” line---we got one of the most reliable songs in the current Phish catalog: “Roggae.” Like “Slave to the Traffic Light” and “What’s the Use?” we are usually guaranteed a delicate ending jam, one that creates a space where we wish we could live forever.

The tail end of the setlist with “Roggae,” Halley’s Comet” and “Cavern” (with a less relevant to this musing “Runaway Jim” wedged in between the second and third listed) led me to think a bit about how the cult nature of Phish plays out.

Before the show, I was deciding if I wanted to wear my normal cargo shorts or the cooler pair I have that are modeled after the Phish light show. I eventually decided on the latter which is why I turned to Mel and said during “Roggae,” cool that I decided to wear my Circus of Light shorts since they’re playing the relevant song. She was wearing a pair of Baba Cools---the sunglasses with a Phish lyric spelled out on top---and since hers said “Cadillac Rainbows,” I was amused that she got her song right after "Roggae."

As for “Cavern,” when I was lying on my inflatable toy, drifting around the pool, I caught myself singing a modified, “I drifted where the current chose, a float under my back.” So many of these lyrics were just chosen for the noise that they made when sung, being used as another instrument more than anything, but like any good koan, they gave us enough that we could find meaning there.

Phish might be a cult, but it’s one where they aren’t as much leading as giving us tools to make our own fun. They let us play with it and reconstruct the meaning and use it to improve our lives. That’s the best kind!

At the setbreak, as one does, I quickly dashed to the churro stand to grab this favorite food option. The Moon Palace churros are of legend. Some people try to subsist solely on them. That might be excessive, but grabbing a bag at the break is a beloved tradition. However, there was a crisis. They were currently out of them and had to refry a batch to appease the quickly growing line. I have a suggestion: Phish needs to hire a churro runner whose sole job is to get to the stand at the likely last song of a set and give the churro stand a warning. The ideal candidate would be someone who is familiar with the stats about which songs close sets and who would know about how long the set has been. Phish management: I know a perfect candidate for the job. I’ll do it in 2026 in exchange for my room! It’s a bargain!

Phish.net likes these reviews to be written from people who are at the show. Why? How else would you learn about the churro near disaster?

I was treating Phish Mexico largely as an escape from, well, gestures at the world… But even with that, opening with “Everything’s Right” felt a bit off. I mean sure, the song is really about someone telling themselves that everything is right in the face of bad things, but for many of us, it might be a long time before the long night’s over and the sun’s coming up. I took it as being more aspirational than anything, but perhaps the band also saw the incongruity. Instead of it being a dance party, we had a Mike solo and a spacey ending instead of the coda. Everything’s weird so just sit tight.

After a “No Men” that indeed was a no man’s lands between the moods, they went into a song perhaps more befitting the mood of many. “Twenty Years Later,” a song about struggling, taking life-threatening risks, still somehow persevering, but only to end up being still upside down despite all of that, might be the perfect late-January-2025 song.

The jam got dark and intense and felt like it was expressing the vibe of the moment, a focus on us to get it all out. That energy continued through the “Piper” that followed. The best song performance of all of 2025 to date, it first got weird and effects laden, pushed through that to reach EUPHORIA, and then got a bit aggressive towards the end. It’s the fears, it’s the hopes, it’s the will to keep fighting, all of that expressed in a 21-minute piece of music that reminded me of why I spent the money to come down here.

The set wound down with the more-popular-in-Mexico-than-anywhere-else call of “Shade.” “South of the border and over the moon,” got its usual cheer as a gentle rain started to fall. You know you’re in the tropics when it’s raining at 11 PM in January and the consensus was, “Wow that feels good!"

“The Wedge” followed and my thought as a well-experienced scholar of Phish is “This sounds kind of weird.” A few minutes into it Mel, who was in band in high school, turned to me and said, “They’re playing this in a different key. I don’t think it works but A for effort.” Since all I know about keys is that they exist and are important, I nodded and pretended that I understood.

Since Trey changed the lyric in the closing “Character Zero” to “Now I learned just yesterday / To play that song in the key of A,” laughing the whole time, Mel gets an A for actual performance. Even if the change didn’t work, whenever Trey is cracking himself up, we’re usually in for a good time.

After a brief break for Trey to wipe the rain off of his guitar, the encore began with the ever-joyous “Harry Hood.” Complete with an extended introduction with Mike and Trey making googly eyes at each other, this was one of those moments. Have no doubts, make no mistake, this is an expensive trip to be sure. I wish more of my friends could afford to go and I sometimes feel guilty that I spend my money on it, but in that moment, watching the wind whip through the trees, feeling the warm rain come down, having the white lights come on, all thoughts of expense or the sacrifices I made vanished. It’s been a rough couple of months for me personally. And it's liable to be a difficult few years. But, for now, my tank is replenished, and I’m ready to get back into it! Indeed, I can feel good about Mexico’s “Hood!"

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