I'm well versed in 97 Phish. That's a nice Timber, but check out 7/26 or 11/13 from the same year. Way better.

I've seen the Biscuits 100 times. They're a shell of themselves now. Started off nice with the new drummer but fell off dramatically the past 2 years. Aiming for the jock jams crowd does that for you. Same with Pretty Lights and Bassnectar. Hideous mainstream electronic music for frat boys. Check out Hudson Mohawke,Rustie,Sepalcure/ Machinedrum, Distal, Girl Unit, Kingdom, Jamie XX, Caribou, Four Tet, Flying Lotus, Murderbot, Canblaster, T. Williams, bok bok, mosca, SBTRKT, etc. there is a whole world of brilliant dance music that the ham band community (and really, America) ignores in favor of this lowest common denominator fluff like Pretty Lights and Assnectar. Pretty Lights never met an old Ninja Tune or Mo'Wax record he wouldn't rip off and present as an original idea.
Think the New Deal broke up cuz their drummer is a scientologist. STS9 doesn't improvise, but they're better than when they did and they ripped off boring LTJ Bukem records. Brothers Past is the only band in that genre approaching forward thinking electronic music whatsoever, and they're great songwriters for a band touring to crowds of like 200people.
Ever hear Lake Trout? Check out 4/21 or 4/8 2000 on archive. Still sounds more modern than Lotus ever did, even while posturing as a "post rock" band. LT had the best jungle drummer eve, covered Amon Tobin a decade before hippies got into him (and fwiw, he is the greatest electronic musician on the planet), Dr. Octagon, aphex twin, ministry, the cure, ornette Coleman. Unimpeachable cool cred with a gang of influences like that.

Where was I? Oh yea. Phish. I look at Phish as if they at going through a re-evolution of their sound. They are less popular than they have been at any point since 1994, and the pressure is off. To me, it sounds like they reset the clock to 1993 but brought everything they learned back with them. They clearly like playing rock music. Even 97 was filled with Hendrix influence at every turn. And the Talking Heads. And Eno. Cooler than your average classic rock, but not exactly groundbreaking in 1997 either.
But really I don't see how you take a show with that Jam-> Frankie Says-> Undermind-> Sand and Limb and complain about it being all rock. There was brilliant type II jamming throughout those songs, just compacted into a brisk moving concision because Phish are fucking masters at what they do. A bluegrass jam in Tweezer would be more "type II" than the majority of 97 Tweezers though. Type 2 doesn't mean "amorphous ambient jam" it means "leaving the structure of the song". So many people define type 2 as a specific range of styles of jams and that's just not the case. When did Sand NOT rock? It always had a guitar solo. Only now, the rest of the band does something besides sit there and watch Trey fiddle with effects. The songs jam structure is pretty much the same, only Mike and Fishman are allowed to contribute now. If sounding more like one 20 year old form of music than another somehow makes it less contemporary sounding, that's simply a failure of people to acknowledge that those sounds we're old. The Biscuits were great from 99-01 and 07--09 but recent Sands are much closer to what tDB does than those boring 99 ones were. Old Sands were like a dumbed down bastardization of Kuti and kraut rock but without any of the bite. Any of the snarling sweaty attitude that made that shit timeless.
Phish may play more rock, but Trey leads the improv (and I get that the overall quantity is way smaller) way less than he did even in 97 or 98. It's revisionist history to focus on the funk when there was so many jams that were based around 3 guys backing up a guitar solo.

I don't want Phish repeating the past. It's why I don't get why Halleys, Gumbo and Roses are so prominent. Those songs are beloved based on the 10% of versions that had jams. I'd much rather hear a Round Room or Waves or Undermind or Halfway to the Moon that hasn't really written its own story yet. I don't want Phish doing what they did in 97. I want this new extraordinarily dense, constantly mutating improvisation that combines the best qualities of 93, 95, 97 and 03 to grow into something new. And I can't even wrap my head around anyone thinking that we're not seeing exactly that happen on this tour. It's not constant, but Phish rarely was. Holding up 97 as the example isn't fair because it's the only time they were ever likely to play 4 world class jams on any given night, spread throughout the show. That lead to 98 which had great ideas but a general dip in quality post Island Tour, and by 99 and 2000 the majority of those "futuristic" jams were just as rote and predictable as the next Possum you'll hear. Only there was a synthesizer, Trey had effects on and Fishman was playing conventional beats so people took those trappings of the great 97 jams as being a continuation and not a stagnation which they largely were. Hell, 03 and 04 are even more interesting than Millenial Phish to me.

I like that they are finding their voice again. Its going to take time if it's going to be truly special. I'm fine with that. This is my favorite tour since 1998. They have played a lot of music since then, and this feels the most honest, passionate and engaged of any of it.