Minuteman Trail cycling playlist.

• Recent live Phish. If you're interested in improvisatory rock music, this is a great time to give Phish a(nother) listen. Their new music has the patience (critics called it 'self-indulgence') of their late-90s dance-trance rhythmic explorations, the generous spirit of their Billy Breathes-era Americana, and greater-than-ever harmonic complexity. Their 2009 album Joy pointed toward the textures and ensemble structures they've been working with, but songs like 'Twenty Years Later' and especially 'Light' have become platforms for leaderless open-form improvisation that's welcoming despite its remarkable musical (informational!) density. The circling polytonality offers one surprise after another without getting opaque -- it's like Ornette (very) Lite, but with a stronger sense of itself than that tag might suggest. I really do think they're at their best right now, and it's never been easier to jump into their live music.

• We're Late for Class, Music of the Spheres. Boring SF-cliché samples, pointless swing-jackass drumbeats, and truly insipid 'blues' guitar noodling add up to perfect trance-inducing background noise. I love this kind of stuff for cycling (Phish's 6/14/00 'Twist' suite is a much better example of the form).

• Wayne Shorter, Night Dreamer. This was the comedown as I arrived at Alewife. Hard to tell whether the overwhelming sense of Trane's presence comes from the unmistakable Elvin/Tyner/Workman rhythm section or actually part of Shorter's tenor sound -- maybe summa both -- but Shorter's sing-song (the nicer term is indeed 'songlike' but I'm a toddler's dad and 'sing-song' is a compliment) approach won me over by the second or third tune, just in time for 'Virgo' to sound exactly like Trane rewriting 'Blue in Green' (down to the astrological title!). Tyner is too tasteful for my taste! I've previously only listened closely to his playing with Coltrane, where he'd just hammer out these chords like a piano rolling down a rock-strewn hill. This is something else: far more restrained (Elvin sounds like a human being instead of Catastrophe), plenty of harmonic meat but none of that unholy power that Trane's quartet generated. I like the album, it's just sort of inbetweenish for me. Fortunately no one's taking away my late-60s Miles quintet albums...