Phish completely melted down SPAC this weekend - there is no other way to put it. All three nights are gorgeous music, and must hear affairs.

This show may rule them all - the "tweeprise show", the "tweeprisethon" - whatever you want to call it - was a fun time plain and simple.

Pretty much the ENTIRE show is worth a listen; if you want the highlights, roses are free was stellar, and SOAM is unmissable. All the tweeprises had such smooth entrances, it was true bliss, check them out.

2nd set gives us sick versions of twist, golden age (or was that tweeprise??!!?!) and a YEM. Listen to it all

Pretty much every song here gets some good tour ending extra special treatment - the tweeprise gag was a blast all night long and then our first ever tweezer encore into a Hood. Yeah, this one will get 5 stars from me

Set One: A+
Set Two: A

Rating: 4.6

absolutely spectacular concert, up there with the best since the reunion. first set is among the best first sets ever played imo, at least in terms of pure euphoric shock value (to go along with excellent playing). i mean, a type 2 roses alone would typically make for a noteworthy first set--and that's a near footnote in the overall story of this show.

i often put phish shows into buckets in my head according to a "horse rating," something my buddies and i have come up with over the years (origins unknown at this point). a below average show is a Donkey, a solid show is a Workhorse, a great show is a Racehorse and an epic show is a Stallion. well folks, this goes beyond even the stallion rating; this show is a goddamn Unicorn.

I have so so so many things to say about Sunday night. I will try to make it sound composed. The short of it is that I think I have a new contender for the best concert I’ve ever attended in my life.

There’s about four tiers of perspectives here IMO.
1. That’s your first show? I hope you had an incredible time. They’re not all like that and it will take you some time to understand why you peaked at your first show lol.
2. If you’re still chasing songs, you may not have gotten the bustouts or once-a-years here. I swear they were teasing Plasma a bunch but that never came.
3. Then we have our homies who say they’ve seen the best show of their lives and maybe they have but they’re like 5 shows in so everyone gently writes them off.
4. And then there’s us fools like myself who (look back at my post history) that never wavered from saying that [insert all-timer] (for me it’s 7/27/14) is the greatest show I’ve ever seen in my life.
• Oh right 4b is someone who has been to 50+ shows and saw tonight and says, “Meh.” Keep chasing brah you’ll never be satisfied ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Well… tonight made me waver and then some. I’m a hardheaded fool and I questioned quite a lot. Some of those questions:

1. Was this show played intentionally backwards? (It must have been with the first Tweezer encore of all time, played specifically for that “Do you get it?” sample).
2. They probably opened the tour with a Tweezerfest and closed with a Reprise fest and literally no one saw it coming right? (That’s a long time to hide a joke in plain sight, boys. Well done lmao).
3. For the guys that surely think about their legacy, they had to have been like, “11 years since 7/27/14 and we didn’t jam much that night but ok fine we’ve done like 5 Tweezerfests ever but you know what would be original?” And yes, Trey. You were right.

What you’ll get from me is perspective 4 about how this is my GOAT (Big Cypress is its own island on the Mount Rushmore and always will be).

The big thing about Phish is if you see the greatest show you’ll ever see, it’s just highly improbable you’ll experience the same feeling ever again. Getting to feel that way again and recognizing it’s happening in real time is a euphoria that you just can’t explain. You can categorize those greats into one or more of the following types of shows.

1. One massive jam. Could be a known jam vehicle or maybe it’s one that never goes for a jam like the Lawn Boy show.
2. A running gag. See: 7/11/00 for the Moby Dick show.
3. A show where the roller coaster kept escalating and going and going and never coming down until you literally had to go home wondering where your face is afterwards.
4. A top to bottom dance party.

I’ve been seeing Phish for 13 years now and I think what makes a great show is where you dissociate, can’t stop dancing and the crowd is whipped into a frenzy from the first note all the way to the last. Hands on heads numerous times. You know you’re feeling great when the sober person and the super fucked up person are feeling and experiencing the same thing. You don’t need any of the extracurriculars because the music and band is already taking you there.

And what better high is there in the world to experience, am I right? It’s why we keep coming back.

For thoughts on the show itself…

What makes this a great one for me is the quality of the music is top notch from beginning to end. I don’t recall many flubs from the boys. Those 4 types of all-timer shows I listed above, sometimes you’re lucky to get one or two in the same show. It is rare to get all of them in one.

By the second song they play Tweezer Reprise, your mind starts thinking multiple ways, they start jamming it and a few mins later someone posts on the internet that this is already the longest Tweezer Reprise ever.

And because this is Phish, that first Tweeprise ending at 13:04 is only the second longest Tweeprise of the night. In the second set we get a behemoth at 23:04. You can argue a couple things here:

1. Was that still Golden Age? I say no. Tweezer Reprise was played and not teased. I promise I’m not just saying that lol
2. “Just because it was 23 minutes, doesn’t mean it was a good jam!!!”

And for #2 you’re very wrong lmao. To my ears at least.

The first set is not only filled with the gag, we FINALLY get the Roses Are Free jam we’ve been waiting awhile for, and then man I do not understand how Phish can destroy us and then understand how to close BOTH Split Open and Melt and Tweezer Reprise to end the first set. The SPAC concourse was a total madhouse after this because I’m sure no one left their seats up to that point.

The bathroom lines were insanely long and I think Kill Devil Falls gets the nod to start the second set to give everyone a chance to get back to their seat and buckle up. While in the bathroom line, I’m thinking to myself a couple things:
1. I really hope security comes and gets guy down from this tree because I am right in its trajectory. (They did).
2. I hoped that we didn’t get an overdone gag. Maybe one more Tweezer Reprise to end the show but leave it be and let’s get some jams from other places.

We get two more. One to close the set after YEM and that’s the last one. The one out of Golden Age… I mean good lord.

I preciously mentioned the encore Tweezer and the boys probably could’ve just played Hood in the encore to send us home but Tweezer stops on a dime and of course we needed one more gag from a Fishman sample we’ve never heard before. Which, I’m unsure how he refrained from that one for so long lmao.

When we look back at the jams of the show, yeah maybe we won’t say any of those versions are the greatest but who cares? You get that deep jamming all show long with a Tweeprise current flowing underneath and what more escapism could you want from a concert?

To everyone who was there too or followed along at home with the stream or listened on Monday morning, we are a fortunate bunch (I believe they say lucky sumsabitches). We were blessed with an epic tour closer at a beautiful and legendary venue. Don’t take this for granted.

And if you’re just listening for the first time or getting into Phish, press play and start at Buried Alive. You may just like what you hear!

Unless you took the brown acid, wound up in a self-induced deep, dark, unstable black hole vortex-of-your-mind and rolling around on the back of the spac lawn covered in dirt, mud, spilled beer, and glow stick juice from a little kid who just tore into his glowstick with his bare teeth, then there is really no reason you wouldn't rate this show 5 stars. Not sure what else you could want from this band.

I only hit the Sunday show of this run, having not seen the band since Manchester III earlier this tour. The Tweepriserfest from this show was like a continuation of the Tweezerfest from 6/22/25. Absolutely massive. Huge Mike bomb in KDF if you're aroused by such things.

Easy 5 stars, onward and upward.

A truly incredible night. I know we are all used to saying this, but for my buddies and I that was the best show we have ever seen. Best 3 minutes of rock and roll x6. Back half Reba jam blended into reprise was exceptional and follow that up with a funky bitch that ignited the crowd in a shared groove. Roses bust out: played long and jammed well sounded like 98!! 46 days had amazing moments and about to run is one of my absolute favorite gotf tunes. Twist and Golden age were big highlights with a massive yemmy where people in the crowd leaped far higher than Mike and Trey on stage. First tweezer encore of all time followed by you guessed it: third repeat within Chicago, Forrest hills, and here. This band is untouchable and we will see you in September. Paradise waits!!!

GOLDEN YEARS

Something pretty special just happened on the 33rd anniversary of Phish's very first show at SPAC, opening for Carlos Santana in 1992.

Whether you’re tuning in the day after this show to try and sort things out while I do the same and write this, or you’re a time traveller scouring the archive for anchors and milestones to try and decode the inter-dimensional shower of blessings that is Phish, I’ll do my best to try and leave some kind of appropriate trace on the walls of the cave here, so-to-speak. On that note, if you do start here (and why not?), please do make sure and check out the previous two nights of this instantly historical run at SPAC in 2025. While it started innocently enough on Set 1 on 7/25, things warmed up very quickly after that, as my review of 7/26 will attest. If you want to think in even broader context, go back to Mexico 2024 immediately following the Gamehendge bookend. Something started there that emerged fully formed on 7/27/25 and blew a Tweezerprise-bomb-sized-hole in the fabric of the Universe. Of course, by that token, to fully understand what happened last night I suppose you would also go back to the Bomb Factory in 94, or the SPAC shows a decade following that, so we should probably stop playing this game and get to it. Suffice it to say: yes folks, based on these shows, Phish's 'golden years' are much also among their ... golden years.

Rather than do a play-by-play breakdown (which feels almost masochistic given the state I’m in after three nights of throwing down—sober, mind you), I’ll try and sum things up with 6 key points (one for every Tweeprise in the setlist, why not..)

1) Sure, this looks like a ‘fun’ show on paper. The band has played tons of fun shows with themes and gags that weave in and out of the performances, most notably among them the various ‘Tweezerfests.’ While this show obviously had a Tweezer-related thread and gag (‘do you get it?’), to suggest that this is what made the show would be a criminal oversight.

2) This show is almost all incredible type II jams. Tweeprise #1, Roses, 46 Days, Melt, KDF, Twist, Tweeprise #2 (!) showcase the band having coalesced a ‘25 sound that is reminiscent of both the space-shredding of 2021, the fusion and funk of the best of 2.0, and the punchy hose of 95 thirty years prior, and the haunting space chants of Bowies of yore. They have not sounded quite like this all year. It has shown up in fits and starts alongside other less-interesting jamming habits that often dominated 2022-2024. It all came together at SPAC this weekend, and really gelled last night.

3) The type II Tweeprise jams aside, the way it was used in songs like Reba, Melt, Roses, etc was really tight and complementary, rather than being a distraction. So many worthwhile details, the Reba-peak, Fish’s nod to the Reba ending while still holding the Tweeprise, which he would do again in when closing the Melt. Chef’s kiss.

4) The details on the rest of the performance are no less impressive. When the band is really on, and they know it, and the crowd knows it, and a feedback loop is created that powers every moment of the show with nary a dip. The Funky Bitch, the About to Run, the Boogie On, you think these are skippable? Think again. Which brings me to..

5) If you’re scanning the reviews here to see what highlights from the show you should check out, just stop. Stop right now. You’re not allowed to do that. I know it’s 2025 and your teen only listens to 30 second clips of songs on TikTok, let alone a whole song, but I’m sorry. You have to play this one starting at the Buried Alive, and take it to home to the Hood. Don’t worry, the actual Tweezer is only 5 minutes.

6) Oh yeah, about that Tweezer. First time they ever encored with it, wouldn't you know? That's pretty cool.

🤯

The Saratoga Springs Performing Arts Center has been legendary for generations. It is woven into family fabric starting with the 1960s concerts of yore, and it’s in the lore of my friend fabric due to legendary Grateful Dead shows in the 1980s. This tapestry also includes consistent appearances of CSN; my wife and I attended a remarkable CSNY show here in 2006 (our final Crosby siting).

Now it is 2025. Many of my heroes have parted. Good friends, though, we have in abundance. I may not have ever seen SPAC this crowded, but I still managed to run into the people I needed to see. Almost all of them, anyway. The magic was alive and firing on all cylinders. The music played the band.

I don’t dwell on details like I used to; these days, it’s about atmospherics. These shows were like mental-spiritual-intellectual fireworks. The Phish was popping off, as the kids say, and they lit us up. Thanks for being there.

This is my first time leaving a review. I've been to many many many Phish shows and I have to admit that I love those special shows when the band breaks out of "the norm" (whatever that is) and does something that is truly, genuinely new.

I was at the SPAC show on 6/19/10 when they opened with Tweeprise. I was at Deer Creek last year when they unintentionally did a "Down with Disease Fest" because Trey flubbed the ending in the first attempt. Stuff like that is what makes those shows memorable for me. Last night was a perfect example.

I'll spare everyone a "TL/DR" review and just say that it blows my mind that after seeing this band for 26 years I still walk away with the biggest smile on my face (and that's without the help of any substances). Reversing the context of Tweezer and Tweeprise is one of those hilarious low-hanging-fruit ideas that makes you think "the idea was right there in front of us all along and yet nobody saw this idea coming." That's what makes me smile. The band just knows how to scratch that itch.

I have relatively little to add to all of the superlatives that others have contributed. This show was top to bottom, one of the most fun Phish shows I’ve ever seen (first was Darien Lake 1997). Straight up fire, dance party, and whimsical Phish hijinks throughout with a tremendous punchline.

For the sake of historical documentation, I headed up to soundcheck around 3:30, once the showers had passed. It was serene listening to them jam with the geyser brook creek flowing over rocks. Towards the end of the soundcheck around 4, they were playing and stopped frequently, with the words “You Get It?” following. It happened multiple times, but thought nothing of it beyond some insider joke. After finally hearing the punchline during encore did it make sense that they were practicing their bit.

This one is for the memory books and I’m so grateful to see this band continuing long into their career.

Incredible show! Is it possible this was a callback (with related reprise adjustment) to another 7/27 Tweezer infused delight, from MPP in 2014?

Below is 7/27/2014 setlist for reference.

What a great summer…cheers to many future tours to come.

_______

PHISH, SUNDAY 07/27/2014
MERRIWEATHER
Columbia, MD

Soundcheck: Sand Jam, Waiting All Night

SET 1: Fee[1], The Curtain With, 46 Days, 555, My Sweet One, Sand, Bouncing Around the Room, Saw It Again > Fuego, You Enjoy Myself

SET 2: Wilson > Tweezer -> Back on the Train -> Tweezer -> Back on the Train -> Tweezer > Waiting All Night, Free -> Tweezer -> Simple -> Tweezer -> Free > Catapult > Slave to the Traffic Light -> Down with Disease -> NICU -> Jam -> Hold Your Head Up -> Jennifer Dances -> Hold Your Head Up, I Been Around

ENCORE: Boogie On Reggae Woman > Tweezer Reprise