The first set kicks off with the old-school pairing of "Fee" > "Rift." "Rift" is a bit rough, but both songs feature above-average playing from Page especially. "Wolfman's" goes deeper than you might expect in the three-spot, with Mike burbling underneath Trey's funk-note-spray for a few particularly entertaining minutes. This is an exemplary first-set version. Nothing Type II here, but about as platonic Phish-funk as you can get.
"Summer of '89" is a really adorable song and actually featured a really neat little jam that was by turns similar to a "Water in the Sky" jam and a jazz-style thing that would have been at home on Round Room. But I have a feeling most Phish fans probably hate it because there are lyrics about feelings.
Like "Fee" > "Rift," "Foam," "Possum" is a particularly old-school pairing; there's something about the way these two are played (especially Trey's solos on "Possum") that recalls '93 to me. Anyway, it's good stuff.
"Julius" and "Cavern" are average-great, but they sandwich a weird "Reba," which is likely someone's Favorite of Ever because it's so peculiar. It's not my bag, really: it features a lot of tasteful use of the whale pedal, but maybe a little too much, and the "peak" is not so much a peak as it is a coast up to the top of a shallow hill. That said, like the rest of the first set, it's played with precision and swagger.
Set two kicks off with a standard-but-welcome "Halley's" which gets a full-band butt-slam into "Light" all of a sudden. This isn't a bad thing, by any means; "Light" gets off to a heavy, rocking start and never really lets up until the 9:00 mark, when it dissolves into space, setting up a perfect segue into "Billy Breathes."
"Billy Breathes" is one of my favorites, and I've never heard a live version match the aural perfection of the studio recording...but this one comes the closest, by far. It's excellent, and Trey replicates his fantastic solo from the album note-for-note.
This is definitely the show highlight for me, but the "Tweezer" that follows is typically solid, as well. This jam runs from a Trey-riff led funk space (starting at 6:00) to a mad cacophony of guitar loops and other effects which is one of the flat-out strangest things I've heard the band do with the song in awhile (from the 10:00 mark up till 13:00 or so). The last few minutes is yet another ambient fade-out, but the space here has a lot more in common with "real" ambient electronica and sounds a lot less "let's make sounds until we figure out what to do next." The burbling closing dissolves eventually into a > "Theme."
"Theme" is flubby as all hell, especially on Trey's part, but he also (maybe as as a result of the flubbing?) takes a unique tack with the outro solo, distorting his tone much more than usual. The "Hood" that follows is a slow-burner, but the peak is worth the journey as Trey hits on a particularly catchy riff and then rides it to the climax, then there's a neat solo Page > "Wading." I thought Trey's "Wading" solo was above average, and while "Stealing Time" initially seemed like an odd choice for a closer, this version gets shredded to pieces.
And it's...not...over! After the "Sleeping Monkey" encore, we get not one, but two "Tweeprise" encores. One is apparently to make up for the lack of "Tweeprise" at the Hersheypark show. The second gets a bit silly (see video), but it's still both hilarious and a fitting end to an already rocked-out show.
This is about as good as a 3.0 show can get without any real marquee jam. I mean, the "Tweezer" is definitely within the ranks of all the excellent "Tweezer"s we've seen since Hampton, but it's not really near the top. However, it and the rest of the show is consistently clever, well-paced, and well-played. If 6/17 was a show that failed partially because it was a Trey-heavy show that Trey had trouble following through on, 6/18 is a show where he delivers in spades. Anyway, this is one of the more impressive two-show runs the band has strung together in awhile, and I'm looking forward to hearing what's next.
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