What’s a band to do?

You drop a flawless Gamehenge and deliver us wet and screaming into the new year. You could have taken the next 364 days off. But no. You hit the beach in February and steal fire from the gods. Four nights of Promethean jams. We could have feasted on those shows for months and still be tasting something new with every bite.

What’s a band to do?

If you’re this band, you come back two months later and set an impossible standard at the cuttingest-edge venue on the planet. No one except the most obnoxious of the jaded could ask for anything more out of 2024, so Phish raises the stakes. Again. Mandelbaum simply abusing all of us mere Seinfelds. They rain down a festival after nine years of drought. Because why not?

What’s the fuck’s a band to do?

For the band with nothing left to prove, Friday night at Dick’s is apparently the answer. We all know Fridays at Dick’s have traditionally been exceptional shows, yet somehow our favorite band has leveled up. If last night’s show proved anything, it’s that the most insatiable fan base in the world will never be a big enough boss to defeat the Phish. They’re going to beat this video game.

If you crave USDA certified prime Phish red meat, put on your best headphones or turn up your highest fidelity system and press play on the second set of this show. It’s a masterclass in psychedelia.

This is as good as Phish gets.

The first set is a strong, solid, technically masterful first set. Each of the five-ish 10+ minute jams (BOAT was only nine) contains seeds of what would branch out and blossom in the second set.

If opening songs hint at what’s to come, BOAT serves up a Sylvia Plath metaphor: Once we leave the station, there’s no getting off. The ensuing Wolfman’s features a quiet jam, each instrument playing its own little song in a beautifully disjointed interplay. The short Hey Stranger improv gives Page a moment to shine with a funky little keyboard riff, and Trey follows with a bluesy solo. Guelah Papyrus, like the Strange Design that comes later in the set, is a nice once-a-year treat. In each case, our boys from Vermont hit every note perfectly. [chef’s kiss.]

The NMINML, Steam, and Antelope jams are the highlights of the set. Each opens in fairly standard fashion, but each then probes, delves, and burrows our neural pathways. At the midpoint of No Men’s, the band launches into a fresh groove; the music gets a little more urgent, a little more effects-laden, a bit darker. The jam starts to drive, then drops into a gurgling valley as Mike and Fish get soupy before re-emerging into the final composed segment. It’s this vibe that the band will pick up and develop more fully in the Chalk Dust jam that opens the second set. In Steam, a slow peak develops over the final minutes of the jam and ends with a Close Encounters of the Third Kind spacey-synthy peak, replete with a CK5 flying saucer effect as the light rig angles like some descending UFO. Antelope achieves precisely what it does best: Just when we all think we’ve hit the peak, the band smiles like Inigo Montoya dueling lefty and the jam makes a quantum leap… and then another.

The lights go up and we can breathe.

At this point in the review, I recommend you stop reading and just listen to the second set. Words simply won’t get the job done.

Sublime.
Exquisite.
Superb.
Epic.

These mere arrangements of letters deserve The Gong Show gong. But in the spirit of trying to capture the moment (for posterity, as the six-fingered man might say), here are a few thoughts.

A set like this makes living better.

Those of us who track and study setlists would be best served ignoring what’s on paper for this one. The titles are mere pretext. There are four geniuses on stage and they want to ply their craft. Verses and choruses are straightjackets. For every song (except Possum), the band rushes flawlessly through the composed sections, which serve as mere platforms from which they dive headlong directly into type-II waters.

In the two years since the near-perfect single set Friday at Dick’s in 2022, Chalk Dust Torture has found a really nice home as a set closer. It was almost jarring to hear the opening riff coming out of the setbreak. The members of Phish are experts at jarring.

The jam starts in the sixth minute and explores infinite territory for the next 20+. Simply the band in its finest form. (Simply, hah!) It’s the sort of jam that feels twice as long as it is. When they re-emerged into the composed finale, it felt like the opener could have legitimately been the final song of the set.

Sand gets its lyrics out of the way and resolves into a preemptive rebuttal to reviewers who might suggest the band explored infinity in the Chalk Dust. Somehow, they found new frontiers in a minimalist arcade jam that felt like the musical version Plinko.

As the set progresses, Phish hits every possible vibe and creates every conceivable atmosphere–constantly reminding us all of something we never knew in the first place.

Since Alpine 2019, Ruby Waves has been one of the band’s most reliable “cut through the red tape of composition” songs, so it fits perfectly in the anchor spot of the set. The jam covers ground that somehow wasn’t mapped in either of the first two songs. It goes from heavy to cow-funkish to plaintive to guttural.

Also, it goes without saying, but just for the record: Kuroda and his crew impressed the intrenchant air with the keen sword of their lights. Just as the band is delivering the finest music being played on Earth, the visual show is somehow breaking new ground. Thunderbolts of Zeus raining from the mothership all f’n night.

What’s the Use? silences 27,000 fans like Blackthought whispering bars of Step into the Realm. A perfect lead into a set-closing Possum.

Except the set wasn’t over. Everything’s Right felt like extra innings. Bonus round. Only a mixed metaphor could possibly capture it. And the shit wasn’t perfunctory. It was like every other jam in the set: A tightly run race through the sheet music and then a spectacular set closing jam that miraculously covers whatever trails haven’t already been blazed and milks the anthemic “nah-nah-nah-nah” for everything it's worth.

Fee encore? Yes please. Few things are more pleasurable.

This is a band that could have rested on its laurels after NYE. They could have rested on their laurels after Mexico or The Sphere. They could have rested on their laurels after Mondegreen. But this is a band that won’t rest at 11pm on the laurels of the peak they reached at 10pm.

Which is what brings us to that YEM > YEM Reprise.

They didn’t even have to do that. They could have closed with a vocal jam and taken their bows. But they want to keep playing. And that’s what it felt like: Playing. As in, playful. Phish one-upped themselves with a series of final YEM peaks on the tail end of a jam that felt like we were in a dorm room with them back in the mid-eighties.

We are so fortunate to be let in on their 40-year inside joke.

Thank you Page, Trey, Jon, Mike, and the whole crew.
Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.