Well well well....

I guess they shook off those island vibes about midway through the first set. From BOAF onward it was faceplant into noise rock.

And as an unjaded vet, I'm starting to feel my fandom at a crossroads. I've been around for multiple Phish eras - early goofball madness, compositional hose, cow funk, segue city, Y2K Big Cypress mountaintop, the denouement to the breakup, the return, peak city, bliss peak city, and dad rock bliss peak city. As the shows of 2023 piled up, it seemed like we might be shifting gears again. SOAM has been the canary in the coalmine - morphing into an all out atonal sonic assault that shakes your rib cage when seen live. The ethos of those SOAMs has been slipping into the longform jamming of many tunes later into 2023 - a guitar effects and synthesizer driven cacophony that can go on and on. On the forums it seems like many, but not all, are raving about this new style. Personally, it makes me feel...... old.

In the future we may look back at this very show and say this was the moment that Phish went all in on noise rock. Portions BOAF, Axilla II and Oblivion as well as a long stretch of a 35 minute Wope are minutes upon minutes of reverse echo feedback, guitar and synth pitch divebombs, squeaks and squelches. It is undoubtedly gutsy and has a ton of adventure and energy behind it. I'd say it goes deep but that doesn't really do it justice. It goes subterranean.

And somewhere down there my fandom gets a bit rattled. I've considered myself, and all of us, as dancing flies on the wall watching an intimate musical conversation happening -composition in real time. Dynamic interplay between band members who fire off quick melody lines, agree on a direction and take us all with them. The noise rock of 2023-2024 feels a different animal. Melody, the band's common conversational language, seems to have been sidelined for raw, naked noise and power. And with that the concept of a groove over which to have the conversation has dwindled. While these ever more common noise rock sections could knock the fillings out of my teeth, it comes at the expense of the downbeat cow funk awesomeness that has been a jamming through line since 1997.

I sense the "Okay Boomer" of that last sentence (or paragraph) so let me say this - you should absolutely listen to this show in its entirety. Up through My Soul the band feels engaged with a 2022 kinda vibe but a bit lethargic. Then from BOAF onward they are a blowtorch turning sand to glass in a way they've been leaning into more and more. If I could rate this show (which we can't) with 1/10th star increments (which we've never been able to do) I'd venture a 4.4 would do it justice.