Boy, I'd love to give you a frame-by-frame review on this one, but — alas! — I have to work tomorrow and LivePhish is telling me that my barcode is invalid. For shame! That means I am A) in bed, trying desperately to catch a few hours of shut-eye before my 7:30 alarm, and B) completely hamstrung when it comes to my ability to relisten to this curio of a Thursday night show — that is, at least, until LivePhish's helpdesk provides me with a new code.
(Incidentally, for the record, you'll catch me paying a subscription fee when I'm dead and someone has stolen my identity. If it's not free, I'm not interested!)
As such, this is all going to be from memory... which can be a funny thing if you've been seeing Phish for as long as I have. Memory itself, in fact, can be a funny thing. More construction than recollection. Unreliable at best. Highly subjective and sometimes suggestible. In other words, please bear with me!
Tonight felt a bit like an emotional catharsis. Frenchie and his antic, forever cemented in Phish lore, loomed large. But, also, for those in the know: the great James Casey.
Goddamn. Rest in Peace, you otherworldly musician! Hearts are heavy and emotions are high. And this show, to put it bluntly, is the best kind of emotional catastrophe. No real direction aside from INTENSE: intensely complex and intensely sad; intensely diffuse and intensely glad. Every song has a moment, every gesture a purpose. There's indeed a certain sort of catharsis at work tonight. It's chaotic and imprecise, but it scratches all the right itches at all the right times.
Highlights — again, from memory — include:
• an extremely balanced show, featuring one deep jam and 2 - 3 straightforward songs per quarter.
• a brilliant Carini — for Frenchie! — to kick things off. See my clunky, inelegant 4/17/23 write-up for more on his what his story means to me ♥️
• a wonderful Caspian outro jam that veers into ECM-style free improv territory.
• the first We Are Come to Outlive Our Brains since 2021 (if that means anything to you ????♂️).
• an excellent Ruby Waves featuring what seems like an excessive number of key changes. It's like four jams in one!
• a focused, productive Tweezer topping out well beyond the 20-min mark. Only about half as long as the first Frenchie 'memorial' Tweezer, this one is easily the more inspired of the two — and probably the best jam of the evening by conventional standards. A must-hear!
• a delightful open jam punctuating the end of Sea of Stars. Trey singlehandedly drags this one to the underworld, then plays Guitar Hero as he rescues it from the clutches of oblivion. You'll never be able to capture it in a recording, but there was a moment when Kuroda killed the lights and the band jammed entirely by the light of the full moon. It was absolutely sublime. (Incidentally, call me when the Trey/Dezron/Fish free improv record drops because that sh*t is going to be AMAZING!)
• a wild little Light that seems to wholesale replace the Oblivion jam. Something clearly wan't working for Trey, so he ripcords Oblivion HARD to more familiar terrain. It might not be the most popular corporate merger Phish setlist history, but I assure you this m'f'er pays some healthy dividends in the long run. What it lacks in length it makes up for in virtuosity. "Must hear" is an obligatory tag here.
• Finally, the Slave closer followed by the 1+ 2 punch of the Show of Life / S.A.N.T.O.S. encore. This little sequence reminds us that we are allowed to be heartfelt and ridiculous in the same breath. Laughter, after all, is the best medicine.
I hope you had as wonderful a night tonight as I had — whether you were deep into the forest of Dicks or positively supine at home on the couch. Was it an all-time classic? No, probably not. Was it a harmonically, rhythmically, and emotionally complex show with themes of hope, love, and redemption for those of us struggling to make sense of loss? Indeed, it was! It proved to be a deeply experimental, highly idiosyncratic effort from the most unique and rewarding band on the live circuit today.
So, do I recommend this show? YES! Without a doubt!
Is it, however, my favorite show EVER? No, and it's not even close! Sorry!
...but does it have to be?! The right medicine will do wonders toward curbing our most challenging of afflictions. The bottom line on tonight's show is that it felt like a healing experience. I'm grateful to have been there. Its replay value might be minimal, but the experience will be etched into my memory for some time. That has to be worth something, right?
I'm calling it a solid 4/5. Too emotionally raw to reach perfection, but not really interested in perfection anyway. This was a show with A PURPOSE! In the end, I'll take that over perfection any day.
