This show will make your fur rise. It'll give you chills.

The French have a name for this effect (of course they do). They call it frisson, and this show will engender it like nothing else.

One of the causes science (science!) offers for this feeling is the unexpected: the unexpected note, the unexpected phrase, the unexpected song. And man, if that doesn't begin to get a handle on what happened last night, nothing does. Hell, it might shed some light on this whole tour.

It doesn't matter much if you've seen the setlist before listening or not. If you're any kind of Phish fan at all, when the band drops out of the thick blues sludge at the end of 7 Below and lands on the telltale opening of If 6 Was 9, you're going to have an electric epiphany. An aesthetic skingasm. Because you won't be ready for it, and that's the type of show this is.

That's the type of tour this is.

By the end of the show, maybe, you've figured things out, and you expect the Zero, expect the Number Line. But that's another type of frisson: the type that stems from seeing a difficult piece completed with aplomb. Closure in a profound way. This show gets you coming and going, again like nothing else.

The band is art-ing at a higher level than at any other time this century. There is no "gimmick" to this show or any other show this tour (see the Forum). Only self-imposed limitations and unexpected choices.

And therein, sometimes, lies the art.