2009-11-01 Festival 8 III

So, especially after my review of 10/31, the third night of Festival 8 is going to make me sound like a broken record. Just like the previous night, 11/1 has a completely unique set that's amazingly done that immediately makes the show a Must Listen, and yet...and yet everything that happens outside of that one set is pretty much inessential and pales in comparison to pretty much anything that the band did during the second leg of Summer '09.

So, the acoustic set is just about sublime. The song selection is a little weird: considering this might be the only acoustic set we ever hear the band play, they stick mostly with songs you'd expect to hear an acoustic setting anyway, but the few surprises are big surprises.

A lot of the expected acoustic songs feature neat little mini-jams, and (at least on my recording) Page's piano stands out over Trey's acoustic guitar, which means when the interlude on, say, "Water in the Sky" hits, Page and Mike are actually up front for once. In addition to the very fact that the band is playing on acoustic instruments, this set also represents a sort of different "order" of hearing the band members than what I'm used to during electric shows, and that in and of itself is a small but incredibly important detail. "Brian and Robert" is excellent in this setting, as is Mike's "Invisible," a song I'd never heard before. "Mountains In the Mist" and "The Curtain With" are the two big surprises here, and they're both played to perfection. "Mist" includes a short outro jam that features a lot of gorgeous acoustic interplay, while "The Curtain With" translates wonderfully into this setting, showcasing the boys' ability to play composed pieces precisely and beautifully without any electronic frippery.

Yeah, I just used the word "frippery."

The rest of the set sounds pretty much like you'd imagine it would. "Let Me Lie" actually sounds better in the acoustic setting, "Train Song" is excellent, and though I could take or leave "Sleep Again" as it's already been played acoustic by Trey ad nauseum, it's not badly played. "McGrupp" is the obvious highlight of the second part of the set, though, featuring some wonderful ivory-tickling from Page and setting up a wonderfully schmaltzy encore.

If you like occasionally indulging in acoustic cheese (like I do), then this encore is for you. "Driver" is great, hearing "Talk" at all is fantastic, and "Secret Smile," like "Let Me Lie," actually comes across better in this setting than in the electric sets it's been used in. Overall, this is definitely not just a gimmick set, and is well worth a listen. It's a wonder that they don't do sets like this more often.

Oh, and here's the beginning of a set of videos of the entire set, again. Thanks, internet!

The rest of the show, regrettably, doesn't live up to the first set's promise, though it's definitely more cohesive and energetic than the previous night's non-costumed sets. In my review lexicon, where I usually refer to these types of sets/shows as "workmanlike," I'd rate the rest of 11/1 as "workmanlike+."

The second-set-opening "Bag" is pure fire from beginning to end, and set a tone, early on, that the band was in Crush-Everything-Out-Of-The-Park Mode. Unfortunately, that never really translates into anything beyod strong, song-based playing, but when this show does excel, it's mostly because Trey's in full force. "Rift" is the trainwreck most, if not all 3.0 "Rift"s are, but the following "Jibboo," "Heavy Things" pairing showcases more amazingly precise and energetic shredding from Trey a la the opening "Bag." This pair is worth a listen if you have any sort of positive feelings toward these catchy-as-hell Farmhouse tracks.

"Reba" gets a surprisingly exact reading up through the end of the composed part, where everyone suddenly accordions into each other and then everyone sort of takes their own path into the jam. Again, here, it's Trey's guitar pyrotechnics that make the jam itself a satisfying recovery. "The Wedge" and "Guelah Papyrus" are neat setlist choices, but neither one is particularly solidly played, but the "Undermind" that follows makes up for what has come before.

"Undermind" actually clocks in at under 8 minutes, but it's easily my favorite "jam" of the show, and quite possibly the festival. Things get spacey as soon as the lyrics drop out, with Trey, Page, and Mike all altering their tones accordingly. The boys continue in this semi-plinko space-funk vein for a few minutes before Trey just decides to up and shred the shit out of everything (in a good way), driving the song to a surprisingly explosive end. "Sparkle" is a nice bridge to a weird, winding, almost slow-motion "Melt," which ends the second set, which on second thought is probably the best non-gimmick set of the festival. Again, if you're a jam-hound, I'm sort of damning with faint praise here, but there's a lot of good playing buoyed by some great playing on "Undermind" and weird playing on "Melt."

The final set of the fest looks awesome on paper, but in execution is just more of the same: high energy, low improv. If you've enjoyed the run so far, you might as well head down the final stretch. If you've found yourself wanting more, you can probably skip this and head straight into Fall '09 proper. The "Tweezer" clocks in at 15 minutes, but it's pretty standard funk all the way through. There's a great, sudden jump into more ambient space at the 14:00 mark which turns into a solid segue into "Maze," which turns out to be a high-energy affair driven by Fish's manic drumming and Trey and Page slamming away for all they're worth on their respective instruments...though again, it's more energy than innovation.

The rest of the final set is pretty straightforward, save for an extra-strong "Limb By Limb" until "Light." About 7:00 in to the song, Page leads the band via weird-space-organ washes into an ambient space that just gets more and more abstract for the next eight minutes or so. There are points where the percussion drops out completely, and Trey eventually gets what sounds like a few different loops running. The end result is a solid few minutes of legitimate late-90s ambient jamming. It never really "goes anywhere," but I don't think that's the point of ambient jamming. If you're a fan of the band's ambient phase (and I'm slowly becoming one), you should check this "Light" out. Eventually, the ambient space coalesces nicely into a "Slave" that's long, patient, and features a very satisfying, weekend-ending peak.

The encore features a nicely-played "Esther," but all told it's a pretty weird closer...I sort of prefer to think that the show ended with "Slave."

Anyway, overall it was really fun listening to Festival 8 for the first time. I feel like in writing my reviews, I became a bit of a broken record and maybe ended up sounding like my ultimate reaction was "Meh, no jamzzzz!" when in reality the entire run was pretty satisfying. I think, hypothetically speaking, had I shown up for this festival and gotten a set of acoustic Phish and an Exile on Main Street cover along with six sets of generally well-played, high-energy classic Phish songs with a slight jam sprinkled in here and again, I would have been more than happy. It's just a little mystifying, honestly, why the band - who have been exponentially increasing their jamming prowess since Hampton - would play a festival - arguably where they have, in the past, been prone to indulge their jammy tendencies the most - and play all three nights straight. I guess I feel like as a Halloween run, this set of shows succeeds, but as a Phish Festival, it's probably my least favorite. Which, again, is not to say it's bad. But, if you haven't got the time to hear everything, just check out the acoustic set and the Exile set. You won't miss much else, except maybe that 10/30 "Wolfman's" > "Piper" and the 11/1 "Undermind."

2009-10-31 Festival 8 II

So, after thoroughly enjoying 10/30's "Wolfman's" > "Piper," and finding the rest of the show a pretty lukewarm affair, I sat down today and mainlined the rest of Festival 8. What I found was, largely, a continuation of 10/30's less-interesting bits, made mostly palatable and at times even exhilarating by the fact that while Phish doesn't jam much (read: "at all") over the course of this festival, they sure as hell play a lot of music, much of which is interesting in ways other than the usual "OMG 25+ MINUTE OXY JAMZ, BRAH" ways. Basically, what I'm saying is "Come for Exile, stay for the acoustic set, then probably listen to anything from Summer Leg Two if you need some jams."

10/31 starts off with two Summer '09 early-first-set standards, both played very straight. "Lawn Boy" is a great curveball early in the set, and "KDF" has a little extra fire to it, thanks to some hot Page action. From this glimpse of life, though, we fall back into a long and whale-filled "Gin" that just kills the momentum, followed by a surprisingly rough "Coil." Page gets an especially nice outro solo on this version, but it's too little to carry what is easily one of my least favorite first sets in a long time. The "Jim" > "Possum" combo shows a bit of energy again, but then the "Antelope," usually a 3.0 fists-of-lightning-blasting staple, falls flat. I usually try to put a YouTube clip of a first set highlight here before the next paragraph, but honestly, I can't really think of anything worth posting.

Exile on Main Street is one of my favorite albums of all time, so it's weird to me that I've never listened to Phish's cover before. Maybe I was afraid that they wouldn't do it justice? Well, they do. Certainly, part of Exile's charm (for me, at least) is the fact that the album is so rough and raucous and just screaming with energy; in that regard, it might have been better to have the band covering it in, say, the mid-90s than in 2009. But otherwise, this is a great take on an incredible album, and that's really what Halloween is all about, right? It's just weird to realize that Phish's live take on a studio album is actually slow, cleaner, and neater than the original work.

Anyway, the first half of the album cover is (pleasantly) paint-by-numbers. The addition of the horns and guest vocals is a nice touch, too, though I feel like there are lots of horn lines from the original album that are just missing in the cover. I'll have to give the album a relisten and see. It was great to hear Phish play "Tumbling Dice," one of my favorite songs off the album, and "Torn and Frayed" gets a neat little outro jam. Two of my other favorites, "Sweet Virginia" and "Sweet Black Angel," get really interesting, almost minimalist readings and are two of the brief moments when it sounds like Phish is making this album their own rather than just trying to repeat what the Stones have already done.

Perhaps expectedly, things really get rolling with "Loving Cup" (performed with horns and the whole shebang!). Fishman gets a vocal turn on "Happy," and there's some mini-space-jamming in the middle of the "Ventilator Blues" -> "I Just Want To See His Face" > "Let It Loose" sandwich. "Let  It Loose" is a great outing for Page vocals-wise, though the "Shine a Light" that comes after is easily the sloppiest version the band has played, and it sort of smudges what would otherwise be a triumphant ending to a great album cover. All in all, though, Phish's version of Exile is very true to the original and it makes for an excellent set, even if the boys' readings of the Stones' songs are generally pretty straightforward.

Someone's kindly uploaded a decent video of the whole set, if you want to check it out:

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the third set is much like the first in terms of improvisation: there isn't any. However, the playing's a bit more consistent and the energy's a bit higher. A 12-minute "Number Line" nonetheless stays within the lines for its entire runtime, then segues nicely into "Fluffhead," which in turn has a herky-jerky segue into "Ghost." Having thought "Number Line" would be the jam vehicle of the night, I next expected "Ghost" to go deep instead. No such luck. It turns from standard type 1 soloing to a bit of full-band bliss jamming in the last few minutes, but it's nothing to write home about. In all honesty, the "YEM" is probably the improvisational highlight of the night. The composed section is very well-played, then there's a brief by excellent plinko-y segment before the whole thing breaks down into an especially scream-y vocal jam that ends a very by-the-numbers show on a wacky note.

The "Suzy" encore brings the Exile musicians back out to sign backup and play some horns, which spurs Trey on to new heights of encore-level shredding, and it's a great close to a long show that is of course notable for an excellent album cover but that also succeeds at being fun despite not having any jams by just having so much goddamn music that there's going to be something for everyone.