Still More to Say

In a pretentious display of rock-critic bluster, I wrote well over my allotted word count when reviewing this weekend's Phish show at SPAC (I got excited, OK?). The first part can be found in print or on our site. The rest is right here. 

“Cavern,” the early-'90s Rosetta Stone for Phish’s empty-metaphor absurdist lyricism, pushed the first set toward its climax, and the line “in summing up, the moral seems a little bit obscure” still tends to describe the band’s polylingual defiance of easy classification (a fact that posits them at a terminal point in rock history, after which instrumental rock became “post-rock”—but that’s another dissertation). A parade of animals closed out the set, with Mike “Cactus” Gordon’s bluegrass “Possum” leading to the new loping groove of “Ocelot,” which seems to simultaneously mock sloth while playfully demonstrating it. Shifting to a properly high gear, “Run Like an Antelope” closed out the uncommonly monstrous set (even by their standards).

“Onanistic” and “histrionic” are often terms levied against Anastasio’s playing on songs like this, and in his darker, strung-out days, they may have been appropriate. But with sobriety has come a returned sense of generosity in Anastasio’s soloing, such that every reaching note and ecstatic squall is as much an offering as it is an indulgence. I know, it sounds trite. But it’s for this reason that the band will continue to sell out any venue they play for the rest of their lives (see also Fenway Park 5/31/09), regardless of how aesthetically dated their music may become (and, yes, it does still for the most part sound like New England in the ’90s.) It’s probably safe to say that the halcyon days of band/audience chess matches and “big ball jams” are over, but the degree of synergy that took place between the stage and the floor Sunday night (and, notably, Hartford two nights prior) recalled, for the first time in a decade, that which launched the band to prominence early in their career. It's enought to give old-timers the chills.

Oh, and there was a whole ‘nother set. (I promise I’ll rein this one in.)

Relative to the prolonged barrage of the first set, the second set unfolded with patience and a little bit of early wandering. “Backwards Down the Number Line,” from the band’s forthcoming album Joy, worked its way into 20 minutes of abstract Moog-driven space that segued seamlessly into the bluesy pop of “Twenty Years Later.” “Halley’s Comet,” a goofy tune featuring Gordon’s vocal bassline seemed to focus the group for the meat of the set. Then the Velvet Underground’s “Rock and Roll,” a long-time staple, followed, complete with the geographically resonant lyric about a “New York station.” It’s funny: When haters (and hipsters) take their digs at Phish, they tend to inadvertently crucify their own idols. When a band covers artists as diverse as the Talking Heads, Los Lobos, Stevie Wonder, Bill Monroe, Frank Zappa, and Richard Strauss, it’s hard to knock them down without kicking yourself in the shin.

A momentary note: When Phish disbanded in 2004, they did so having conspicuously neglected to rehearse “Fluffhead,” an early epic that still stands as one of Anastasio’s most ambitious compositions, for performance at their send-off festival, Coventry. When the band returned this spring, “Fluffhead” was the first song they played—a sort of testament to their newfound sense of purpose. In the men’s room at set break, however, a group of naysayers were busy dismissing the tour on the grounds that another revered staple had still not been revived: “Harpua.”

Given this set-up, you can imagine where said fans ended up stuffing their feet.

The song isn’t especially intricate, but here’s the shtick: Every version has a different improvised narrative that leads to an interpolated cover song. The most infamous version featured the entirety of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. This time, Anastasio set the scene whereby the song’s protagonist Jimmy had fallen into a “blue” time in his life. He needed guidance, and just when he needed it most, his spiritual guide came down out of the sky. He was a “small middle-aged man wearing a dress.” At this point, Anastasio took a seat at the drum set as drummer Jon Fishman, a short man wearing his infamous “reinforcer” dress, came around to the front of the stage. The spiritual advice he offered was a putrid, off-key version of Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl.” As Anastasio later commented, before the concluding section of “Harpua,” it “didn’t work on so many levels” that it worked just fine.

Closing the second set was the Holy Grail composition “You Enjoy Myself.”

Just like the show opener, the encore is something fans guess at in futility, and I’m willing to bet no one in attendance saw this one coming. After the barbershop quartet “Grind,” during which the band calculates exactly how many days they’ve each and collectively been alive, Anastasio gave a pretty clear indication that, while this is the end of the return tour, it’s far from the end of the band’s touring. For Halloween, they’ll be throwing a three-day festival outside L.A. So, whether it was intended to comment generally on their commitment to touring or specifically to Southern California (remember, the moral is obscure), Phish closed the last show of their summer tour with a spot-on rendition of AC/CD’s “Highway to Hell.”

Comments

[Nate]

Excellent review Josh. You clearly have good knowledge of Phish and their history. Thanks so much on behalf of all the phans. For the haters (and the hipsters): keep on hating! We'll be busy having a f-ing blast at Phish shows for years to come.