after a long review hiatus, i had to get on the record for this show.

i have been a critical reviewer in the past, even once being downvoted so many times on a negative review of a Chicago 2018 show that i was automatically banned from .net for 48 hours. so i will stick to my roots and say that the first set was fairly regular. some extra sauce on the Punch intro, a solid Everything's Right, a treat to hear Camel Walk. the closing Bowie also found itself in some interesting places; the ending felt a bit abrupt when they went to the closing trills, but check out the preceding few minutes.

i discuss the first set just to note that the frame didn't make me think they were headed toward a massive jam. there were no crazy bustouts, the type-2 was relatively sparse and, to be honest, it felt like Trey was a bit out of sorts (didn't help that he seemed to have some technical problems with his rig). but then all of a sudden they were humming along in Sand, 14-15 mins in just flying, hose spraying everywhere. Around 23 minutes or so, there's a section where it could've easily ended--or gone into Ghost, had they not played it the show before. but instead they pressed on, but unlike some long jams that feature spacey, near-rhythmless sections as they find their footing, this one nearly instantly morphed into a pulsing, darker jam. eventually, they moved back into a Albany-YEM-meets-Weekapaug jam (similar to the initial long hose section), but Trey employed some octave effects and Fishman pushed the pace that echoed the timbre of '99 jams.

the whole jam, to me at least, was played with a beautiful mixture of razor-sharp intentionality and flow-state spontaneity. some may disagree, but i really appreciated how long they sat in each section (until the very end), letting the ideas run their course, never rushing to find something new, but seizing opportunities to push the jam whenever they presented themselves. to quote the texts i sent a friend after the Sand concluded: "that was the real uncut shit. freebase phish. As Good As It Gets."

the rest of the show was excellent: awesome My Friend My Friend, inspired choice with Boogie On. the encore's closing two songs, Wilson and Possum, were played with with verve that matched the electric atmosphere that had been percolating in the venue since the tenth minute of Sand, when Shit Got Serious.

if i had written this review last night, it would have simply said "Hell Yeah." the second set (and the Sand in particular) is simply why we do all this. it's why we scavenge for tour dates rumors, scramble to book hotels, route road trips across the country, find excuses to get out of work--all to see shows and jams like last night. Hell Yeah indeed.