I don't typically write too many show reviews, but I've had some scattered thoughts about this tour and this show in particular for the last week. We are so lucky to have the band playing at the level they are at right now. This year has given me a new appreciation for the depth of the Phish catalog...which was explored with precision over this summer tour. Trey seemingly made a conscious effort to play a very different show every night. This of course is always the case on some level...but this year felt different. "I Never Needed You Like This Before" rang so painfully and cathartically true from both the band's perspective and ours.

On to this show. This show feels like quintessential Summer 2021 show in its unrelenting and supremely confident unpredictability. There were a few song choices from this night that raised my eyebrows a bit...but not in a cynical "Oh no, what are they doing?" sort of way. My reaction was more that of curiosity and in those moments at the show that night...I realized that I fully trusted the band's judgement perhaps since the first time since Magnaball. Take Sand>Sigma Oasis for example. The Sand busts out as an early night Type 2 highlight and while the segue into Sigma Oasis is excellent, at the show I expected Sigma to be a standard reading...but this is 2021 Phish. The danger, the risk...it's back. Sigma becomes an incredible jam and winds down into one of my favorite Phish ballads in All of These Dreams.

The lyrics to this song hit me particularly hard. This past year and a half has had me alternating between deep anxiety, depression, fear and it caused me to retreat into myself and my own fears all too often. I adopted a sense of complacency in this fear...but while listening to the lyrics to All of These Dreams it hit me. I was living again. I was taking in an incredible Phish show yet again, and my sense of gratitude essentially overwhelmed me. As for the music from the rest of this night, it was just perfect. The band deftly moved vastly across their catalog...giving us excellent Type 2 throughout the entire show, great and atypical song selection, some of the most unique music I've heard from this band in years in Simple->Catapult>Meatstick. This show really had it all, and I'm so incredibly grateful we got to experience it and the rest of this amazing tour.

As to my earlier point of feeling alive again, these lyrics from All of These Dreams hit me like a ton of bricks at the show.

Such is the promise, such is the curse
You could just live your life, better or worse
Knowing the cache of dreams up on that hill
Beckons and sways but won't bend to your will

And if you go there, and after you do
All of these dreams would be yours to purse
The rest of your lifetime, devoid of a care
If you keep your eyes open, you may find yourself there.

Thanks for helping us feel alive again Phish. I'm eternally grateful for your presence in my life as it has enriched basically every aspect of it. I hope everyone who has suffered from the fear and anxiety of this nightmare year+ can feel the reprieve I felt this night. Seeya in the Fall.