@the_nitty_gritty said:

This would be fine with me if what I heard on Tuesday had more of the "deep, patient grooves" that have characterized many of their best shows. It doesn't need to be "electronic". Big Cypress, MSG 98> 99, 11/7/98, 11/14/98, 7/4/99 etc. all had a great balance between mind-blowing crazy jams and deep, patient transcendental grooves.

crazy notion: those shows still exist 'on tape' as the old folks say. the 98-00 era offers several hundred hours of the kind of stuff you want. do we really need more of it? (this is to leave aside the question of whether they do get into 'deep, patient grooves' these days, on which score i strongly agree with @nichobert.)

if you want the particular experience that 'jamtronica' offers, by all means continue finding it with the various bands you mentioned! you want phish to change genres. it's not going to work. they go where they go, they like what they like. it's one thing to say they're not as fluent as in 1997, or something; but it's another, dumber thing to assign the band demerits for not being a different band.

yes, they were better at ambient-machinic 'psychedelia' than pretty much everyone else. but they're not those people now. they're these other people, who have recently played the following music:

* 8/5/11 r'n'r > meatstick > boogie
* 12/28/10 hood
* 6/3/11 disease > fluffhead > bowie
* 8/19/12 crosseyed > light > sally > crosseyed > theme
* 6/23/12 mike's > simple > light > groove
* 6/15/12 birds > back on the train > heavy things

none of this is 'jamtronica'-inspired, none of it sounds like pre-2009 phish, none of it is (centrally or finally) about screaming guitar solos and drum pounding. some of that happens; that's a big part of phish's sound since 1983. (listened lately to the 11/23/97 gin > dwd > low rider > dwd? go do that. trust me.)

the clean minimalist laptoppy funk grooves of 1997 and the sedimentary haze+thrash of 1999 belong to those years; they were experiments. phish is an experimental band. right now they're experimenting with other stuff (movement logic, harmonic language, leader shifting). the experimentation is the important part, not its outcome.