@davidtaus said: [quote]

Then things came off the rails. Miss You is a pointedly sad song - this requiem for trey's sister who died is full of pain. Emotional pain isn't an experience you have with phish very often, hardly ever. Tension? Yes. lots of that. but emotional pain has never been part of the phish pallete. You listen to Ray LaMontagne or Pink Floyd for emotional pain, not Phish, because when Phish does it, it comes across as cheesey. trey/phish simply don't do heartbreak well, or explicit emotions for that matter. Phish is much more impressionistic: splashes of light, color, texture. An explicit rendering of any emotion, the "tell" instead of "show," just never works. and that range of emotions is just out of place at a Phish show. I know Trey's themes in songwriting as of late are about getting older, confronting mortality and middle age, time slipping away, and so on. Which is fine, but I'd rather he cut a solo album full of those songs and leave Phish as its original vision and bread and butter: one big overblown word salad cartoon. I'd be a much more satisfied phan if we never heard Miss You, Joy, Show of Life, Summer of 89, Time Turns, Sleep Again, or similar (although some of these are actually good songs, they're just out of place in the phish context).

This paragraph above represents, to me, one of the most profoundly accurate expressions of the subconscious reality of Phish and its audience I've ever read. This paragraph (and the comments made after it) sum up my own feelings of this tour.

I think there is a major disconnect currently happening between Trey and the whole Phish experience. Perhaps Phish no longer works for Trey. Maybe he's more into the TAB thing now. That's fine, it's his right, they're his songs, but to blend the two night after night just doesn't work for me.

Love these guys to death, but I think it's time to spend my money on more of the large catalogue of their past and not expect this year to deliver. There's something off with the band but we won't know until some time goes by, because they won't tell.