Permalink for Comment #1312860450 by funkbeard

, comment by funkbeard
funkbeard Who the hell approved this as a review?

If you took the time to listen to the show, you would see that it is clearly among the best of the year. If all you care about are "jams" and "setlists," then you managed to miss everything extraordinary about this particular show.

Trey and Phish are not the Trey and Phish of the past. Get over yourself. If you want old school, become "The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday."

I thought Friday to be one of the best shows I've heard in ages, and on second listen, I was bored to death.

On the other hand, Saturday's show is simply sublime. The more I listen to it, the more amazing it becomes. Trey is playing other-worldly guitar right now, and his techniche is at an all time high.

He is definitely more influenced by jazz at this point, less into rock and roll runs. He is also infusing every line with more variation and vocabulary than before. Rather than simply peaking and peaking, he's adding complex runs and weaving round and round those peaky lines, so that you get both texture, depth, and peaks; and it all comes at you a mile a minute.

If you don't think about the music he's creating, you're not gonna get it. This is not the "in your face" sound anymore. You actually have to participate.

As the show goes, the Possum is one of the year's best. Even Poor Heart bounces more than usual, forgoing Fishman's silliness in favor of revealing the great song that it is. Every song has a little extra special going on.

Sand, for example, is one of the best jams I have ever heard out of Phish. The vertical symmetry of sound, the layers and the space between the instruments, the exquisite phrasing and breath, and the fact that the band is so loose that the Sand groove does not bound them like a prison, but rather they can easily roll into Tweezer without extensive tension or force.

Further, it took me three times before I actually heard the power of this Antelope. It is sublime. Trey plays more like a jazz musician than a rock musician here, and he casts many listeners aside while scaling one fantastic peak after another.

One thing that also sets this show apart is that the band are on from the very first note, and they never lose the groove. There is no warmup here. They are on fire right from the start.

The Fluffhead, on the soundboard, is perhaps the most note-perfect rendition, with Trey even reharmonizing the final build of Bundle of Joy, seemingly spontaneously.

There are many musical surprises to be had this night. I would definitely call this one of the best shows of 3.0, and the above review is nothing but jaded complaints of someone who listens to too much Phish and is bored to death with himself.

Reading the review, it is nothing but a complaint about what they didn't do. That's not a review at all. That's a failure to perceive what's right in front of you.


Phish.net

Phish.net is a non-commercial project run by Phish fans and for Phish fans under the auspices of the all-volunteer, non-profit Mockingbird Foundation.

This project serves to compile, preserve, and protect encyclopedic information about Phish and their music.

Credits | Terms Of Use | Legal | DMCA

© 1990-2024  The Mockingbird Foundation, Inc. | Hosted by Linode