Sightless Escape

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History

Who knew that, given the Phish Universe’s genre promiscuity and the musical-polyglots prowess involved, there was still a rock subgenre that had not yet been, really, fully, and properly mixed into, perfectly used in, the cosmic stew of It All? Enter “Sightless Escape” and the best damn surf rock moment–the killerest Dick Dale nod–ever.

Yes, yes, of course we know about Wipeout in Phish History. And yes, we are going to focus first on that one aspect of the song, before discussing the rest of it. It happens exactly six times every time the song is played. Rapid-fire scratching with a guitar pic in one hand, while the other busily but bountifully frets down the frets, riding the neck à la surf rock badassery (change the guitar tone and it becomes heavy metal, incidentally). A vital, hyper-alive, chromatic descending through notes–pulling us along, moving us from depths through desire, deftly, and most definitely not daintily.

Harkening all the greaser-grit of the surf rock world and the 1950’s/1960’s era that birthed it, this compositional and arranging choice of Trey Anastasio’s does a lot of work, both sonically and metaphorically. It happens as a series of bookends, really: in-between and/or before and after each verse, chorus, and solo/jam segment. It conveys what might best be thought of us as a chunky urgency. It can be understood as the musical embodiment of the searching and the scouring that the lyrics express–and a good deal of the larger Ghosts of the Forest project explore.

“There’s a light that’s guiding me,” is the core of the chorus. “There’s a light,” indeed, repeats throughout the song, threads it in important and undeniable fashion. Is this phrase–this numinous notion, this pressing plea–an incantation, a beckoning? Is it a reminder, a re/connecting, maybe, from within the depths of existential reckoning and deep grief? Is it a begging, a beseeching, maybe even a redeeming? It is productively unclear if the song’s protagonist is uttering the words to himself, or to us.

“Kiss it as it flies,” Trey intones in the first verse, then reconnoiters “astral tides” and “bigger reasons,” all of which seem difficult to sight–noted and grappled with by the narrative persona as if oh-so-very-much depends on it (because so much does, my fellow heathen angels, you Dionysian wonders).

Yes, as we know, that Light is ever so important. It simply must grow brighter (and will); it must guide us, and it must always be our North Star, as we are slaves to traffic lights and stumble into this or another flight. That light is the answer and the hedge. The light, as Trey warns in the second verse, is the bulwark against “sliding backwards,” against “the cold dark night,” against becoming lost and “coiled like a snake” that is, dangerously, “ready to strike.” Yes, ultimately, “the light that’s guiding me” is the key, the leitmotif, of the entire song, is the powerful and poignant epicenter of “Sightless Escape”– and, really, of It All.

Since, as of this writing, the song has not yet thrown up big numbers, we can engage a fairly thorough recap of the trajectory of “Sightless Escape” here–with 17 total performances by four different musical outfits, with only 4 of those by Phish themselves by the end of 2025. As part of the Ghosts of the Forest song cycle, and run of live dates that took place in April of 2019, the song was played nine times–with “Sightless Escape” always slotted in the fifth spot on the setlist (fascinatingly and worth noting, the GOTF run was, and still is, the only time that both Trey and Fishman had ever played the exact same setlist on every tour stop). 

Video by Trey Anastasio

Four months later, the song dropped a rhizomatic tendril into the fertile and focused soil that is the Trey Anastasio Band. Indeed, the song made its TAB debut and was played twice in Colorado during summer of 2019: in Denver and, four days later, in Vail. It then made its Phish debut later that same summer, with another rhizomatic rooting at Dick’s. A few more months after that, in January of 2020–as we were just beginning to hear about, but also perfectly right before we-all-know-what-virus hit our existences–TAB played it at Los Angeles’s Wiltern Theatre during night 2 of their run, its first deployment as a second set opener. 

This writer was pleasantly soaking in the light of the sun in the parking lot outside Dick’s Sporting Good Park a few months later, ahead of night 3 of Dick’s 2019, when he heard the sounds of soundcheck emanating out from inside the home soccer stadium of the Colorado Rapids. He was pretty sure he was hearing and recognized the groove of the intro to “Sightless Escape.” After passing up 25 prior opportunities to debut it in the guise of Phish, was that really “Sightless Escape” they were soundchecking, and did that really mean that they were going to play it a few hours hence? Well–attempting relative brevity here–as soon as that surf-rock-glory moment happened, it just boomed out to the parking lot, and left no doubt. Honest to heavens, the stadium rumbled, like an awesome wave crashing ashore. They were soundchecking the song, they were going to play it, and play it they did–a Phish debut to open a strong second set that, needless to say, had at least one person in the crowd running very high on joy.

The song is based on a delicious groove, one that invites us to close our eyes and get right into it from the outset–looking inward, whilst hailing cosmos. That being said, “Sightless Escape” appears lighter than it ultimately is, is less easy and more challenging than its surfaces may lead us to believe. Yes, it’s a wonderful, delightfully chuggy groove. But, if we listen and feel into it more closely, if we let it, “Sightless Escape” at the same time hypnotizes and entrances–pushes and pulls into deep/er. It involves the gut, comes from the entrails–even as it reaches outward and upward toward the light that is guiding you and me.

Mention must be made of Fishman’s approach on the drums. As he is wont to do–and as no one does quite as well and as often as he does, arguably–he crafts a foundational drum beat/rhythmic figure that is quirky and distinct, and perfectly effective. There is always, or at least so far always has been, an organ solo in between the two main verses. Then, the final chorus dispensed with, and after the fifth surf-rock-glory-moment, the song takes off into jam land. It is worth noting that Trey’s approach in the jam portion has tended to start off in plinko territory before turning the corner into more full-blown guitar-god soloing mode.

The versions with GOTF are all cut from the same cloth, are similar in approach and feel, with Jennifer Hartswick and Celisse Henderson providing backing vocals in key spots behind the verses, in/as the chorus, and toward the end of the jam as the song closes out. It should be noted that for the last GOTF version of the song, the one from The Greek in Berkeley, as the tour wrapped, Henderson takes full-charge toward the end, with a full-throated wailing that is quite powerful and moving.

With Trey Anastasio Band, the backing vocals switch to the amply capable and lovely humans that are TAB’s horn section. In fact, the listener might note that it is in the texture, the feel, the grain of the backing vocals where the alluring, deeper, dark-and-down edge of “Sightless Escape” comes more readily into play, can be felt most clearly. The backing vocals repeating “there’s a light”  functions more as deeply spiritual, repeated chant, than it does as standard, simple backing vocals fare. It’s the gospel choir looking for and calling out to our souls.

Finally, if one is tracking closely, one appreciates, the way one often does, the touch that the horns provide with/in TAB. They perfectly mirror the guitar line that Trey composed (as he often does) as the transition from verse-chorus land to solo-jam terrain. But here, again, it is more than just a nice arrangement flourish, which it certainly is. The horns add yet more of that subtly foreboding, dark-night appeal and threat: slinky, snaky, subtle, seductive, yes; but approach the night with caution, and do not, please, lose sight of the light as you escape into places that aren’t exactly healthy.

Video by Gregory M.

There are encouraging signs, as “Sightless Escape” continues its process of taking rhizomatic hold. The song’s tendrils are spreading nicely and really starting to add up to something. If we count the 9 times it was played in/as GOTF as one performance (given the same-setlist recital nature of those performances), then the song has opened a second set 4 times out of 10. One could read into that.

Most keenly, though, as of this writing in late December of 2025, the last two performances of “Sightless Escape” by Phish shine a lovely guiding light. At Riviera Maya 2025, on night three of that four-night run (1/31/25), in the historically very prominent and weighty second slot of set two, the song was played for almost 13 minutes and, importantly, ventured for the first time into the magical realms of Type II jamming. Then, played deep in the middle of set two and as one of the two key jams of the set, “Sightless Escape” was played for 17-plus minutes on 7/11/25, in North Charleston, NC–again, à la Type II, turning in its most serious, exploratory, wide-open version of itself yet.

Video by Phish.

More to come, to be sure! We cannot wait to sight the next rhizomatic tendrilling of this song, and the many more to come after that! 

Last significant update: 12/28/25

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