The first set is good! 'Mike's Song' surprises with a relative-major move into an echt plaguephish jam, all good vibes and easy drift; the rest of the Groove-sandwich is standard high-energy Set I stuff. (Hey remember when everyone hated 'My Soul'?) 'Mercury' doesn't go far, but the segue into '46 Days' is really sweet. And while 'Taste' is long past its prime (one of the clearest 'much better in "1.0"' tunes), Page takes a slow-build solo that goes on two choruses longer than Trey expects -- always nice to hear Page get wrapped up in it. I like the mellow 'Casual Enlightenment' jam even if the song doesn’t feel like it's quite there yet. 'Bowie' continues the 'unexpectedly light' theme in moments -- again, not a deep jam, but I'm so happy to hear the band ducking and weaving throughout the first set.

The second set is an instant classic and I'm shocked by the mixed reaction it's apparently receiving. This isn't a 'had to be there set' -- the good stuff is right there on the tapes.

'Gin' combines the weekend's spacey sounds of the tour with a relentless forward movement, and opens up beautifully for what I assume the crowd thought would be a huge marquee 'Waves'...but while the first 'Waves' jam doesn't get wild, the band carries huge momentum into the now-standard coda -- was there some embarrassment about the botched reentry to the final vocals? Regardless, Trey gets into some noise, his brothers back him up, and they end up in the 'Ghost' key for a unique version of that skeletal (wraithlike?) song.

Fishman has been a force throughout this tour, and he was clearly loving the novel 'Ghost' groove -- to the point where he clearly didn't want to bail and was wrongfooted by the full-on segue arrow into 'Sneaking Sally.' Yeah, I was bummed by Trey's hard turn out of 'Ghost'...but he immediately signaled a return to the previous tune in lieu of the 'Sally' vocal jam, and if the others weren't quite sure what to expect, they weren't playing in a holding pattern, they were goddamn going for it. The post-'Sally' jam feels to me like the old old stuff: energy building, elements of the previous couple of songs percolating up through the mix, Trey and Fish grooving along, Page keeping options open with varying colours, Mike deliberately tossing in odd ingredients...

Were you disappointed when 'Twenty Years Later' (and then 'Waste,' of all things!) snuck into the ongoing party jam? I can understand that, sure. But please consider that the previous 30 minutes of music had been pretty welcoming groove-stuff -- then notice how the '20YL' jam works a deliberately weird variation on Phish's current pickmeup mode, and that after an absolutely perfect one-time-only segue into 'Waste' we get Page's simply gorgeous synth backgrounds to Trey's outro guitar solo, like something out of a sad part of Stranger Things. And instead of closing out the 'really trying' part of the set as they might all-too-recently have done, Trey goes for a puckish-then-unhinged 15-minute 'Twist > Makisupa > hybrid jam > Martian Monster (sort of, thanks Page) > Twist' medley that would be a memorable highlight of literally any Phish show ever.

This is such an absorbing, joyful hour of music! And we still get two songs -- the problem is, one of them is Page's lyrically meaningful answer to 'Last Tube,' 'Most Events Aren't Planned'...and the other is the impressively tiresome 'More,' with a perfectly charming 'Gin' tag ('The story of...Sallyyyy!') to close. If you can deal with five minutes of syrup, that's a jam-filled first set followed by an entire CD-R's worth of old-fashioned medleytown Phish, with rich jamming in 'Gin' and 'Mike's' and 'Waves' and 'Sally' and '20YL' AND an improbable, frankly daft 'Twist++' excursion to boot. Weird regional variants and private jokes and great waves of joyful noise -- what a set, what a show.

Plus then 'Contact,' and a ragged valedictory 'Slave' to close out the weekend. (Sorry for pissing on 'More' before, but it can't be avoided: 'Slave' is the cathartic organic Rock Majesty that 'More' seems purpose-built to provide, yet (for me) just...doesn't.)

...

Phish used to be an explicitly comic band, back in the day -- why else pair 'Scarlet Begonias' with Hendrix's 'Fire,' if not for a specific kind of intellectual-prankster thrill, an extremely inside joke? -- and as they've moved toward 'dad rock,' their foregrounded antic surrealism has given way to a more diffuse 'dad joke' vibe too. (Remember the golf gag at MSG!) This set has that quality: it's not the hopped-up madness of the Roxy, the Bomb Factory, Big Birch, even the Worcester 'Wipeout' set, but something a little more deliberate, like an ex-ballplayer busting a move on the kids at the local ballcourt, his ankles not the sure thing they once were but his touch still deft. This is a purely pleasurable set ('You've got to please yourself'), but those pleasures are neither deep-dive psychedelia nor summer haze nor brainy antagonism nor cock-rock majesty. It's neither dad rock nor Gifted Child showcase.

Rather, I'd say it's a mix of the old form and approach with new sounds, at a more settled tempo (not just rhythmic but inner: its emotional tempo). That thing they used to do that literally no other band in America could do -- those improvised medleys thick with internal rhymes, allusions for the diehards, frequent but gentle Fuck You's to the normies -- they can still do it, but the old reasons have fallen away. This is how that band grows into themselves, with nothing whatsoever to prove. To me the tell, and maybe the high point, is 'Twenty Years Later > Waste': the least exciting part of the set but also the part where these guys old enough to be grandfathers manage BOTH a couple of perfect improvised segues and to make light from two (distant, different) sweet songs, full of real honest weight and longing.

Friday's 'Blaze On' is colossal and 'Simple' is a Phish-psych all-timer, but this show makes me feel perfectly happy, and I bet it felt amaaaaaazing to play.

Maybe this isn't the Ideal Introduction to Phish. But if not, then what is? Seems to me this is who they've (we've) been all along.