SET 1:

First Tube: sure solid opener call. Mix isn’t ideal but I’ve just come off the 2013 shows on Apple Music where the mixes are stunningly good so maybe my ears need some realignment - wish the drums were louder though. First half is pretty whatever but it warms up nicely and the second half rages nicely.

Uncle Pen: fun, played well with good solos from all.

Carini: oooo fun! Get down! Super rare in the first set, not letting the foot off the gas at all yet. Jam starts in a funky/choppy space with Mike pretty much taking the lead melodies. Turns happy and mellow at 6:30 ish. Loving the Mike/Trey interplay at 8:20, that’s what it’s all about my friends. Trey messes with chordal whammy playing for a bit at 9:30 and by this point it’s clear that something is up as normally Trey would have pulled the ripcord on this by now given the era. Very clear that it’s gonna be one of ‘those shows’ even if the setlist gag isn’t clear yet. Things get super abstract by 10:00, big ol’ whirring clouds of synth in the background and some solid rhythmic motifs. Some Trey ripping from 11:00-12:20 then it dissolves altogether and wanders along in eerie ambience set against Fish playing a beat in 11/8(!). Finally Trey makes the call for > KDF. Decent jam, must’ve been mind-blowing to get a jam like this in the first set at the time. No hose or anything and a bit uncertain from Trey but nothing to complain about here. >

Kill Devil Falls: haha, setlist gag confirmed. Awesome. Crowd must have been going bonkers. Really spirited run through the composed section and Trey’s voice sounds good. BOAF teases at 6:30 or so. Appropriately raged though nothing you wouldn’t expect from the song. Page with the ‘we love Dick’s, we do’ afterwards followed by Fish’s rimshot, lol. Crowd starts a ‘we love Dick’s!’ chant, but it’s soon cut off by…

You Enjoy Myself: YESSSSSSS! Total ‘holy shit’ moment. Even if this weren’t clearly a setlist gag, this would just be awesome placement under any circumstances. I’ve never heard the crowd louder during the FIRST pause, forget the pre-Nirvana. Composed section is near-flawless for the era – I hear one note from Trey that wasn’t played, literally just one, and everything else is accurate and (most importantly) articulated loudly. Page is great through Boy Man God Shit and tramps. Standard jam though Trey really rips this one, then B&D, then one of my personal favourite VJs ever with the iconic ‘we love Dick’s’ stuff from Trey, HILARIOUS stuff. Love how that part of the VJ culminates with the band settling on ‘Trey loves Dick’s’ and repeating it until Trey bursts into laughter – perfect. It’s like they’re 18 and idiots again, in the best way. THIS is where 8/31/12 really takes off for me and never really lets go. One of the most airtight YEMs of the whole era, nothing mind-blowing but so much fun - worth returning to absolutely.

Ocelot: lol, awesome. Just like with YEM, would’ve been good placement even minus the gag. Very well played type 1 Ocelot from Big Red. All eyes on the U now…

Undermind: FUCK YOUUUUUUUU. Was pretty much inevitable that this one would deliver the goods given its place in the setlist and the need for it to be stretched out to work as a set closer. Follows the usual formula until the call-and-response between Trey and Fish and then it moves quickly into a groovy jam. You can feel the four-headed monster juuuuuust start to rear its head at around 7 minutes in. It’s brooding, it’s washy, it’s floaty. Mike is bumping all over the place. At 9 minutes in it turns upbeat and happy, big fan of how much the rim click cuts through the mix. Trey turns on the melodic bliss at 9:45 and we’re slowly climbing up that ladder. Effects at 11:00 ish, then whammy, then BIG trills from Trey, quickly echoed by Page. Denouement turns spacey and broad with Page organ, and it ends in a big flourish. The legendary Dick’s Undermind! Not personally one of my absolute A++++ creme de la creme jams of early 3.0 (I go to Reading DWD more often to scratch the bliss hose itch) but it objectively is great stuff and would have been incredible at the venue. What a face-fucking set!

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SET 2:

Runaway Jim: haha direction of the setlist gag is now clear (love their choice to end set one on the U, modern Trey would never do something like that.) Jam meditates on the standard Jim feel for a while. Fish drops a really inventive 6/8 groove while the rest of the band searches around, veers VERY close to LxL for a while but Trey (understandably) resists. By 10 minutes in Fish and Mike have locked in on a groove, then the rest of the band follows them into an awesome funky/jazzy motif, sort of Afrobeat-ish? Love Trey’s rhythm playing here. After a bit of wrangling Trey and Mike push the band into ANOTHER funky rhythm, this one even slower and more cowfunk-like. This lasts for a couple mins and finds its way into a peaceful melodic Mike-led space over which Trey executes a whammy solo nicely. Some more soloing over this groove for a while, then finally it dissolves into a really cool outro with some spritely plucking from Trey. Some cool passages in this jam mixed with some more mundane passages, worth a listen overall. >

Farmhouse: LOL this would be a bad call in any other circumstance but because of the setlist gag I’ll allow it. Trey’s soloing is sweet and plaintive and I love the sustained note that he holds for what feels like nearly a minute. The song ends - like, properly finishes, with the end slowdown and all - and then Trey, clearly clock-watching, holds onto some ambience, and suddenly we have a dope ambient outro jam that should realistically be marked as Farmhouse > Jam. This portion of the song is awesome, goes from sleepy ambience into disturbing spacey tension over the course of a very slow souring. Seriously good playing from all members. Reminds me of a range of stuff, kinda sounds like Tim Hecker or early progressive electronic music. Also sounds like the 2001 and they definitely would’ve gone there if not for the setlist gag. This is pound for pound my favourite Farmhouse for sure. Really wonder whether this jam was pre-planned, I would guess not. >

Alaska: cute A, nicely peaked.

Chalk Dust Torture: solid pace and conviction in the composed section, then really great old school raging from Trey in the solo, then we’re straight into ANOTHER extended jam, and this one starts more promisingly than just about any other in this show so far, with a weird snaking funk groove starting around 7 minutes in and continues for a good while. Love Fishman’s choice of drum part here, not at all like his usual playing and he doesn’t relent until 10:00. At that point he relents and Trey pushes the band into a nice serene space. Cool melodies after 12:00 that sound great with whatever effects Trey is playing with. Opens up into a slightly more ambient sound around 13:45, then contracts again once Trey starts up some rhythm playing. He starts soloing again and it sounds awesome, then Trey starts using reverb pedals to fire off notes into the void and it’s all too beautiful for words – REALLY nice section here. Finally the jam starts fading into the abyss and we are left anticipating the E. I’m a big big fan of this jam, this thing really has no dull moments as far as I’m concerned. One of the best 3.0 Chalk Dusts and probably this show’s most underrated jam!

Emotional Rescue: lmao. Hilarious. Glad they picked this one for this slot. Mike sounds horrible here, like truly unbearable. No matter. >

Fuck Your Face: had to happen! I like the energy of ending the set with this. Also one of my favourite ripcords in the band’s history, Trey abruptly starting this during the Emotional Rescue outro is hilarious. What is Trey saying in the big outro flourish here?

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ENCORE:

Grind: perfect!

Meatstick: even more perfect! Love the Phish from Vermont.

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OVERALL: so here’s the rub with this one – if I were closely following Phish at the time this show would have blown my head clean off. This is a revered show for very good reason; I see many people describe this as the moment Phish was truly ‘back’ for them, and I really can’t dispute that too hard, even if I definitely prefer certain shows from early 3.0 up til this point. I mean, five massive jams? A band that was willing (albeit forced) to explore again, even if it didn’t always work out? An absolutely classic setlist gag that started a trend that continued up to a few years ago? Fantastic stuff, and if the Phish you had come to know mostly shirked type 2 jamming, 8/31/12 would’ve been so damn refreshing. As for me personally, I really like this show, though definitely dispute the idea that it’s perfect or deserves a place in the highest echelon of 3.0 shows (it is for SURE up there though, just not in my top 5 or 10.) As I implied the flipside of the band needing to jam more out of necessity is that not all of these jams are zingers. Carini and Jim have attractive timestamps but there’s not much there in the way of sustained brilliance – both are worth relistens but they do detract a little from the full show experience for me. The setlist gag also makes the flow a little strange at points, especially in the second set, and the LivePhish mixes for these shows are a bit iffy if that’s an issue for you.

Having said that: a possibly career-best Farmhouse, a possibly career-best Undermind (though one that might be a touch overrated in the grand scheme of the band), an awesome underrated Chalk Dust, a great YEM with a top 5 vocal jam ever, and good renditions of KDF, Ocelot and Alaska. Hard to argue with that!

5 stars on paper, 4.2 stars in execution.