There's nothing to be done. I guess it's time to talk about Phish's reunion tour.
I've seen three shows this summer, and heard all the 2009 shows so far.
They've been playing well lately, and their written performances (vs improv) are better right now than they've been since maybe 1996. The fluidity of '97 is (temporarily?) gone, replaced with a middle-aged familiarity and zest that they've never quite had before; the catastrophe of late summer '04 is gone too, and if the improvisations aren't as daring as they were in the late 90's, nor as patient and organic as in 2003, Phish are attacking their songlist with the verve of their 15-years-younger selves, particularly the mature new material. The new album should be interesting.
The real question: how's the jamming? God damn it, how are they improvising?
Please understand that this summer I see, or maybe just saw, my twentieth show, and I've heard hundreds of 'em. I'm not as easily impressed as I was when I first flipped for Phish in 1994, and I'm attentive to aspects of the music that less musically-inclined listeners might not care about. (I miss plenty of others - guitar technology, for instance. Who the hell cares what brand of guitar equipment a guy uses, you know? Learn to play the goddamn thing, then you get to jack off about logistics. And yet I wish I knew more.) The point being, you might go to these shows and have the time of your life. You might hear nothing amiss. You might be bored stiff, or changed forever. What follows is only my two cents.
Well. So how is it? What's up?
A couple of things.
Less stylistic variety than there used to be. Phish's first big step forward in the studio was the seemingly effortless virtuoso comedy of 1992's A Picture of Nectar. After the lumpy prog of Lawn Boy and the scattershot Junta, here was a tight set of fiery songs flawlessly executed, tightened over years of shows, kept to almost-reasonable lengths. The most amazing thing about the album was its vast reach: Nectar seemed to encompass every imaginable musical style and invent a couple more for spice, and if it didn't yet have the fully unified sound of Rift (still Phish's strongest batch of studio songs, though not their best album), the album showed Phish's omnivorous appetite. In 1998 the band could cover an entire Velvet Underground album on Halloween, Dark Side of the Moon two goddamn days later, and a mix of Marvin Gaye, Zeppelin, and the Beastie Boys along the way. And if they always sounded most like themselves, they always approached jams on their own terms - molding their approach to the sound, style, and language of each song and genre in turn.
But in 2003 the band's many different sounds congealed into one consistent, thrilling - and then a little boring - rock'n'roll tone and feel. They were itching to tear the songs apart, but often the results sounded like...well, like one big song. It wasn't a bad song, but it wasn't the insane polyglot musical language the band and fans had learned to speak and appreciate.
Right now Phish's improvisations have some of 2003-04's sonic consistency. From a purely sonic perspective things are clearer and more precise than they were during that weird interregnum; Anastasio's guitar sound is less dirty but also less likely to seep into a noisy mud. In terms of spontaneous creation, though, the band isn't creating a new language right now. There have been flashes of pathbreaking boldness at times, and guitarist Anastasio's playing has certainly deepened in the last five years, but if anything the band now sounds more like their partial progenitors, the Grateful Dead: less cohesive, more focused on individual voices, with everyone doing their thing behind the lead player. Mike and Page are playing better than ever on bass and keys respectively, but half the reason that's so obvious is that they're being featured as individuals at the cost of group creation.
What it all means is that a given song is far less likely to spark sudden innovation - either they're on or they're not, and Anastasio's less mercurial playing prompts the group to take fewer chances. So they stick to what they do best, which is Being Phish, and that sounds awfully familiar. As beautifully as each of the four guys is playing, the mystical 'fifth man' emerges all too rarely. So you hear a rock band, instead of The Greatest Fucking Rock Band Alive.
Looser climaxes. The band doesn't have the same psychic connection as it did up through the 2000-02 hiatus; their famous complete trust is (for now?) gone. Where a 1994 'Harry Hood' or 1997 'You Enjoy Myself' jam was all about setting out together and arriving together - 'loose/tight' in the sense that each player could improvise freely knowing that there was a shared expectation about structure and fluid exchange of improvisatory role within a basic envelope - today's jams are, paradoxically, both more rigid (less likely to wander far afield, less playful) and more flabby (far less likely to clap militarily together on the downbeat, far less coherent in the 'we are all one big chord' sense, etc.). The easiest way to see this phenomenon is in the climaxes of big jams. They get there, but not as cleanly and decisively as they used to. If you like the old stuff, the pre-hiatus stuff and particularly the self-contained declarative-statement jams of the mid-90's, today's big bangs might seem both more triumphant and, oddly, less earned.
Far less open-ended and exploratory improv. Last night's Deer Creek show featured, by consensus, some of the best jamming of Phish 2009. 'A Song I Heard the Ocean Sing' broke open a near-continuous second set, with no time to breathe in the first thirty minutes of intense rock. But listen (at phishows.com, or phishthoughts.com/nospoilers, or livephish.com) to that 'Type II' jam between 'Ocean' and 'Drowned': a sprightly jam in the song's relative major key, the tempo kicked up a little after a meterless ambient interlude, with the whole thing dying out into some tinkling piano and the onset of 'Drowned' on no more than ten seconds' notice. Lovely, generous music for a couple of minutes, but isn't the point of 'Type II' jamming that the music becomes something other than an extension of the song? Meanwhile 'Drowned' itself morphs into one of those uptempo clav-driven funk interludes you'd find in nearly every latter-day version of 'Weekapaug' or 'Down With Disease,' which entertains the crowd without going anywhere for a couple of minutes, and then devolves into 'Twist.' You can faintly make out a suggestion of the 'Twist' bassline from Mike five seconds before the segue, but other than that, this 'most exciting jamming of tour' is basically a mid-jam fade and Trey counting off the next tune.
I don't want to dismiss the whole enterprise, because the music is still pretty great. Indeed, that 'Twist' gets hot and stays that way, deliberately echoing the scorching 'Oye Como Va' jam from the Jones Beach 'Twist' earlier this month but with a doubletime funk feel; only fools and assholes can complain when the band floors a gassed-up 'Twist.' Yet people are talking about this set as if it's the best run of tunes this whole tour - and without exception the tunes stay within shouting distance of homebase. The only total departures are 'ambient jams' of the sort that bridged so many songs in summer and fall 2000, to devastating effect in Fukuoka but boring audiences to tears on other occasions. I like their new, busier approach to ambient jamming, but it doesn't feel terribly risky or innovative; the formless between-song breakdown is one of the first crutches a beginning improvisor learns, as leaving the rhythm and making noises without tonal center frees you to resolve to pretty much whatever you'd like, within mood constraints.
Then again, what kind of person demands that a rock quartet stay 'innovative' after a quarter-century of pathbreaking improvised music? What kind of jerk am I, anyhow?
Well, but what kind of band are they?
More one-guy-partying showoffery. These are great musicians, no question. And they make fantastic party music. But it's their collective creation, their communication, that holds fascination for their fans. A ten-minute 'Tube' that's basically a long clavinet/cowbell freakout does tend to run into the ol' diminishing-returns wall after a while, like a pounding noisy 'Free' consisting solely of Big Bass Sounds followed by Trey's screaming guitar outro. (He's demolishing every single version of 'Free,' by the way. But the band hasn't taken a risk with that song since 2004 at least. In the late 90's 'Free' could end up in some straaaange places; we could go there again, y'know. I'd go.)
The crowd eats this mildly onanistic business up, and you can't fault the guys for wanting to rock out and show off a little. But these spotlit showcases cease to be communication at all, after a while. I don't need 'em. (That's me. Whatever.)
Less dicking around. The boys are charging out of the gate at full speed on every single song - which is both exciting and costly. The best 'Taste' solo ever (12/30/97) begins with nearly 30 seconds of quiet; the best 'Ghost' and 'Tweezer' renditions percolate for a while before cohering, as do classic 'Wolfman's Brother' versions like 7/24/98 (with its sharpest-ever climactic turn). Wasn't that the lesson of 1997 - take your time, build the music slowly, and something good will float by?
But Trey Anastasio's been to jail, for god's sake, and he wants to squeeze every note out of each performance. So you get two fewer minutes of idle notions per song, no dead air as it were. Meaning no more delicate, fragile versions of 'Limb By Limb,' no autumn-breeze openings to 'Hood,' and 'Reba' won't open with just Mike and Fish setting the scene in near-silence. The floor is raised, which makes the ceiling seem lower. Which is of course an optical illusion, but do you really give a damn when, after all, it's your house we're talking about?
And yeah, last night's Deer Creek 'Tweezer' heads right out of the gate with no muted chording from Trey, boldly takes one step 'round the circle of fourths, and bubbles to a pleasant end - but you never quite get the sense that the band is building a single thing together, even though the individual playing is more complex than it's (maybe) ever been. Which is to say...
Good focus, less patience. Phish's great achievement in 1997 was to develop an approach to group improvisation that built on dance rhythms and electronic/hip-hop energy, slowly evolving complex musical structures and building to razor-sharp peaks while patiently combining each existing idea, each going rhythmic concern, with whatever new notions struck the band in the moment. They learned patience, a new kind of musical democracy, and it elevated their game far beyond even the anthemic heights of fall/winter 1995. Check out the colossal '2001' from the Great Went in August '97: twenty minutes of pure after-electric-Miles eccentric-white-nerd dance-porn. Right now the lads are playing joyously but less patiently, meaning tunes like '2001' take off more quickly, do what they need to do in less time, and never quite reach the dizzying heights of the band's best stuff.
I listen to Phish in part because I want danger. I miss that feeling: 'How are these musicians going to get back to that song? And if they don't, where in the world will they end up?'
Phish 2009 hasn't been at all dangerous. Entertaining, yes. Beautiful, rocking, profound, yeah. But there's a part of my mind that's going unused at these shows, and I look forward to turning a corner along with the band. Soon, soon.
wax,
first of all, kudos for trying (tirelessly) to raise the bar over at phishThoughts. i actually had to stop reading/posting over there for several weeks after hampton b/c of the effusive praise/lack of critical distance.
just read through that last one with all the backlash and buffoonery. what a larf! "get a blog!" they say. can they not navigate the different colored links?
the shitty thing is, there's some really smart cats over there. but even for them, the "turn my ears off and just enjoy myself" refrain is a pretty bullshit stance. i guess i take umbrage at it all b/c of phish's origins in PERFORMANCE, of my own personal investment in this thing, of watching it grow and evolve and continously challenge itself for so many years.
the antithesis of performance (for me at least) is rote recital. phish's composed music on its best day falls strictly in the former. and i heard some of that on this tour, using these gorgeous classical fugues and syncopated runs to reinact that group mind communication that is capable of breaking down walls (in both band and audience).
there is some of that true performance going on (brother bathtub w/ kids!, sand, ghost, etc), but honestly, i'm sick to deth of the word 'improv' getting bandied about like it's some sort of glowstick. i'd venture to say we haven't seen true improv AT ALL yet from these guys since their return. maybe once or twice, but on par with 11-30-95 tweezer? or 6-21-94 melt? those songs are bona fide MOVEMENTS, with distinct improvised passages that collect their own steam from the superheated core of the group at work.
i'll never agree with anyone that phish is a rock band. but i'm afraid that's what they're becoming. and the world just doesn't need another rock band. and 'greatest album' ever? sorry to whoever in the band feels that way, but any album that includes 'kill devil falls' is immediately exempt from the running.
i love what you say about danger, and it resonates deeply with how i've always felt bout the phish. can the road ever be dangerous again if you're spending all energy on simply remembering where you are?
performance is to recital as bob said "session" is to "version."
i want to hear phish make it another session, not another version.
best,
kev
Posted by: kevin are hollo | 22 June 2009 at 11:47 AM
they are performers
this is what they love
they have lived on the road since they were teenagers
and they cant just turn that off.
they evolve and sometimes, devolve, as conventry showed, with trey making the mistake of thinking he was bigger than that whole itself.
but this is the past.
http://phishandthedead.blogspot.com/
red rocks was sick!!!
sammy
Posted by: sam martin | 01 August 2009 at 04:03 AM