[We would like to thank @andrewrose for providing this recap. -Ed.]

“Awake, arise or be for ever fall’n.” - Milton, Paradise Lost.

Saturday night in Saratoga Springs! If you’re just tuning in, Phish kicked off their tour-closing run in the state capital area and hometown region on Friday night and, in the second set, unlocked a portal that’s been coalescing all year—or maybe since Mexico ’24—dropping a set so flawless and filled with space-hose that the they chose to release it in its entirety on Youtube rather than the customary single highlight. After that performance, speculation abounded about what was in store for the bigger Saturday night crowd. Having left everything on the table the previous night, surely expectations were to be tempered. A jukebox Saturday night special, or maybe just something a little loose to conserve the energy for the tour closer on Sunday? They couldn’t possibly keep that up, and keep digging deeper down.. could they?

Well follow me now and you will not regret / A tale of the trip to Hell and back that our wandering minstrels did beget.

It didn’t take very long to determine what we were dealing with, as a particularly juicy “Martian Monster” seemed like both a nod to the rocket that had taken off the previous night, and a way to keep the inter-dimensional space juices flowing. And as if to cast out any doubt of those intentions, they followed it up on theme with “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” appearing uncharacteristically early in the first set (for this era). A callback to the song’s first role in the repertoire as a launchpad, it perfectly set up a "Mike’s Song" with a pairing not seen since 2014, and harkening back even further to 93 and 94, when it showed up frequently to this effect. I was already feeling a touch of nostalgia going in, celebrating show #75 on this night, 31 years in, and I was taken right back to the first show and tape I truly fell in love with and wore down to the ribbon: 12/30/93 II. (A brief PSA for any relative newcomers here unfamiliar with this show who might also be interested in flawlessly flowing sets and 2001>Mike’s pairings—this is required listening.) And speaking of “Mike’s Songs” from the 90s—it’s early days yet but I’d wager this one is going to stack up with the classics: a blistering, gnarly, balls to the walls version that somehow blended the Mazagalactec fusion from the night previous, and the precision, punch and economy from versions of the song from its early heydays. I’m also told it contains Mike-led teases to Black Sabbath’s “N.I.B.,” a tale about Lucifer's tempting invitation to an unnamed lover, whose love for him “has just got to be real,” don’t ya know. I’d throw an R.I.P. Ozzy in here but I think the more appropriate sentiment from all angles might be: “May He rise again from the depths of Hell!” Must hear, as we say, and maybe even the show’s highlight.

A slow dissolve into the elemental soup of “I Am Hydrogen” would have perfectly fit the set’s tone here but instead the band elected to bring out “Wading in the Velvet Sea” in the middle of the ‘Groove. A minor quibble, but after a “Mike’s” like that they can play whatever in Satan’s kingdom they like. “Wading” was soulfully played and nicely set up “Weekapaug Groove,", getting the crowd dancing again. Speaking of the crowd, it was big tonight, unsurprisingly more crowded on the lawn than the previous night and in the pavilion, which I was fortunate enough to get into with a little help from my friends.

Pavilion tickets were notoriously harder to come by this year, a marked difference from even a year ago—the likely confluence of a number of factors: Phish is more popular than they ever been, drawing huge crowds across the country + maybe suddenly not-so-"weird" in a world that, as Terence McKenna prophesized 20 years ago before he died, has just gotten weirder and weirder. That, and the no-doubt AI-enabled bots that have now made it impossible to even use Cash or Trade, milking every lost dollar and inch out of every fan, whether fortunate enough to be wealthy, or unfortunate enough to be willing to pay whatever is necessary for a fix. The future’s here, we are it, and we are terrifyingly not alone. Whether we’ve opened the gates of Heaven or Hell, I can’t say for sure, but I’d put good money on both.

Speaking of "racing all your siblings for the tunnel," and "brothers crushing you to the wall," the band wasted no time in getting dirty again after “Weekapaug" with “Sand,” revisiting similar energy as the Mike’s, staying mostly in the song's structure but nevertheless providing another of the set’s highlights. “Evolve” followed, the first lighter offering of the evening, contrasting well musically, and also the first thematic glimpse at the divinity behind the darkness, the paused moment in time before the Sun began to shine. A song about creation, surely, but also about a “mistake” woven right into it, the fault line of reality, the crack in everything where the light—and sound—gets in. And maybe also about the angel who was such good friends with God that a falling out, and long fall into a frozen lake, was inevitable.

So “My Friend, My Friend” with his knife and his wife show up next. A song which, by this point, I shouldn’t have to tell you is in the finest form of its long career. A jam-vehicle MVP going on a couple years now, including a recent tour highlight with a beautiful version on 7/15 in Philadelphia at the Mann. This one didn’t quite live up to that reputation, but it did settle in nicely into a spooky territory that had “Kung” written all over it, but which instead was eventually swept up into the set closing liminal space “No Men in No Men’s Land” and its suggestion that "darkness is the one thing we all understand,” before sending us off to the Purgatory of set break wondering just “how far we have fallen,” and which way was up.

Before we try and get our bearings and explore the second set, maybe I can be permitted a brief intermission of my own here, as a close Canadian friend navigating a different kind of fall from grace. These are indeed strange times of barons, borders and bodies of water. The weekend before this one I made a trip down to Vermont from Montreal for a weekend getaway with my girlfriend, passing quickly though what would normally be busy season for border crossing.

We visited Cold Hollow Sculpture Park and went to Burlington for the first time in many years, hitting the farmers market and then record and vintage shopping, heading to Stowe and plunging in Bingham Falls, and then to Bread & Puppet for Sunday service before heading back up to my family’s cottage in Quebec’s Eastern townships less than an hour away. Passing by Nectar’s on the way to get a breakfast sandwich, and coming across an old Coventry t-shirt at vintage popup, (the one with the vacuum with a $5 ‘used’ tag), I felt both nostalgic but also somehow 'out of time.’ I felt like both a foreigner in another land, and also right at home despite the border’s burden. Following it up this weekend with the even more familiar path down the other side of Lake Champlain and hiking and baptising myself in Kaaterskill Falls on Saturday with my friend who lives in Hudson only reinforced the poignant paradox. Gratitude for the immense beauty of this land that is also in many ways my home, and for the falls and streams that spawned Phish—and also grief for some of the darkness and disease that lingers in the air, like the haze from wildfire smoke that obscured of the Hudson valley at Inspiration point rock and which as I write hangs over Montreal keeping folks indoors. But there’s no light without darkness. No salvation without suffering. In case that’s not already apparent, Phish seemed intent to make that point on this night, both musically and lyrically, and it became even more explicit in Set 2.

So when last we left our guides to the underworld they had dropped us in Purgatory, but little doubt was left about where the second half of our journey would begin. Where else but in the oily depths of “Oblivion”? This version stretches and pulsates, at times nimble and ethereal, others dark and groovy, even including “She Said, She Said” teases from Page, adding emphasis to the afterlife vibes. I’ve said little so far about the band’s individual performances and upon reflection I think that says more about the strength of full band interplay of late. Trey still stands out in front noticeably, but the wall of sound that Fish, Mike and Page have increasingly been building under and around him is such a powerful pulsating orb I’m not quite sure where to begin deconstructing it or if I should even try. Suffice it to say there’s an embarrassment of riches to explore in each of the details they’ve been bringing to the table during this run so far. So they take us to “Oblivion” and back then crash up through the shale and oil into the ooze of “Down with Disease.”

This “Disease” feels cohesive and strong, picks up with Fish holding it down half way in before Trey takes a rhythmic lead under which Page starts to swell. There’s patience to Trey’s playing on display these last couple nights that at times has been harder to come by, and it ends up creating space for good leads to be layered on top of the rest of the band. Then Mike can get in and complement, challenge. In short, they’re hooking up and it's yielded some beautiful results. Speaking of patience, don’t sleep on the full-on space in the final minutes of the “Disease” jam. Instead of just slipping into “What’s the Use?” which seemed plausible, they took their time and really indulged the atmosphere and effects (and strange vocal haunts.. did Page “meow”??). I’ll take as much of this as they want to beam out every night of the week.

Then, out of the eerie emptiness and swells of space, “Light”. I was reminded here of a set from Toronto in 2022 I attended that had a similar feel and narrative arc including both a “Down with Disease” and a “Light," and which was apparently a tribute to Mike Houser on the 20th anniversary of his passing from cancer. The “Light” jam was, like the “Oblivion,” both airy and nimble, and then aggressive. It got “Timber”-like, building to a confident peak with Page starting to shine on the piano, meeting Trey’s machine gun with gusto as Fish thundered. They pulled it back seamlessly to “Light” to close and stretched out the closing segment with emotion: the whole band holding the “guide us to our goals” line in harmony overtop the finale. Trey kept a little distortion going before dropping into the salvatory hands of a “Life Saving Gun.”

And what a “‘Gun!” Somewhere between the power of the “Mike’s Song” from the first set, and the absolute blistering hose of both the “Chalk Dust” and “Piper” from Friday night, this is another show highlight, and maybe Mike’s finest moment on a night full of them. There isn’t a minute or note wasted here, and I can tell you, dear reader, I was feeling pretty saved in this moment from the back of the pavilion, hands in the air bouncing up and down, as the entire room swelled to ecstasis. Between this and the previous night, I haven’t felt that kind of full-house-hose thrill at SPAC to these levels since June 2004. Go get her! To the depths of the underworld if you have to—and don’t look back on your way out.

“Waste” flowed beautifully as a much-needed reprieve here, emerging seamlessly out of the scorched earth, a kind of call back to the moment outside of time and creation that “Evolve” held in the first set, a moment which "Beneath of Sea of Stars” captured so well the night before. Trey and Page both crushed it. Tear jerking stuff here, folks, which led immediately and cleanly into “Fluffhead.” It was the perfect way to close this redemptive arc, a song that has come to take on new meaning in the modern era, about disease, darkness, redemption, and joy. (Speaking of joy, check out Fish’s unbridled enthusiasm during this particular Bundle of Joy segment. He was feeling it.) "Fluff" was executed almost flawlessly and, of course, brought the house down.

“Golgi Apparatus" felt like a companion piece to “Fluffhead," also very tight and crowd pleasing, and made me grateful for the digital ticket stub I was able to get my hands on and into the pavilion for my 75th show—and for an encore I got to enjoy next to @Icculus for the first time (after who knows how many ungodly combined years and hours of asynchronous listening).

But that wasn’t it, was it? What does it all mean? Where are we headed? What comes after the Fall and Purgatory and seeing the Light? After all the problems and hopes? There are chapters yet to be written. And on the 8th day, God and Satan started a band and made Rock n’ Roll. And it was alright.

See you tonight for the finale folks!

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