The Verdict:
While just about every show lately, especially during fall tour, has skewed more toward "weird" than "good," some have managed to be weird in a good way, though most have been weird in a "meh" way. This show is one of the weird-good ones.
Sorry if that last sentence is confusing. I'm food coma-ing mightily at the moment.
So, the first set is absolutely full of friggin' songs. There are thirteen of them. And almost every one is a song that would make you raise an eyebrow in surprise if you heard the band start it up. It's like they just picked a shitload of songs they hadn't played in a long time and threw them all at the wall the see what stuck. That's the good news and the bad news: the good news is if you get super jacked about rare songs being played, this will blow up your brain; the bad news is that that novelty's about all you get. The performances range from standard-great to "Which one of us wrote this song and how the hell do we play it again?", as you might expect.
Set two is a lot stronger, though less consistent than all the segues on the setlist might lead you to believe. "Possum" doesn't go anywhere special despite opening the set, but the band absolutely hammers it nonetheless. The "Light" jam is serious business, with a section I'm calling "space calypso," a "Manteca"-style jam, and a smooth ambient wind-down into a "Mike's" that recalls the "Possum"'s rock-rage. Things get more straightforward after the "Light," but they don't stay that way as there's a "Makisupa" -> "Night Nurse" -> "Makisupa" sandwich in the middle of the set. Then the "Ghost" joins the hallowed company of many a great late-show mega-jam: it's short, but incredibly powerful and "gets there" with plenty of time to spare. Highly recommended for many reasons, not least of which being the great segue into "The Mango Song." The set-closing "Groove" also gets weirder than usual before transitioning through a "CYHMK?" jam into a reprise of "Llama" from the first set.
There are a few strange snags in the flow of this set, but it's still one of the more interesting and one of the (mostly) best-played sets the band has put together in fall 2010, at least.
The Live Review:
10/26/10: So, this show opens with the first After Midnight since Big Cypress.
10/26/10: The Sloth is next. Sounding great out of the gates.
10/26/10: Alumni Blues is next and also has some serious swagger. This bodes well for some actually interesting music...
10/26/10: I spoke just in time. Alumni > Jimmy Page > Alumni, but with a neat little blues outro jam tacked on to the end.
10/26/10: Sounds like the early 90s in here.
10/26/10: Mellow Mood! Also gets extended a bit. Mike is going to town.
10/26/10: After a long conference, the band settles on Access Me next. Nobody knows the words, but hey.
10/26/10: Llama next. I'm loving the results of this setlist weirdness...mostly.
10/26/10: Another long conference, and then All of These Dreams.
10/26/10: The Curtain!
10/26/10: With!
10/26/10: This S1 so far deserves some special attention just because of the setlist.
10/26/10: After Midnight, The Sloth, Alumni > Jimmy Page > Alumni, Mellow Mood, Access Me, Llama, All of These Dreams, The Curtain With
10/26/10: Not a single one of those is a song I'd even remotely expect to hear at a typical Phish show.
10/26/10: Extra-good Page solo in this Scent of a Mule.
10/26/10: A Song I Heard The Ocean Sing is getting a little extended, too.
10/26/10: It's Ice! This is a weird first set. It's like they've just abandoned the entire 'Play the same songs we always play well' mode.
10/26/10: Instead, they're playing a lot of rarer songs, with absolutely no respect for flow or whether they remember how to play them.
10/26/10: But somehow, it all works really well.
10/26/10: Walls of the Cave closes the first frame.
10/26/10: There isn't anything in that set that deserves a relisten...
10/26/10: ...but if you like first sets with unpredictable setlists, it doesn't get much better in '09-'10.
10/26/10: Second set opens with Possum. Early jam is really broken-down and minimal.
10/26/10: That was a HUGE rock and roll Possum. No legit jamming, but just about the best S2-opening version you could hope for w/o it.
10/26/10: Light is next. Been some great versions lately, so it has a lot to live up to.
10/26/10: I feel bad about this, but at this point in my Phish life, I just sit back and wait for the Light arpeggio jam to...
10/26/10: ...transition into the interesting part without really paying attention to it.
10/26/10: Some loops from Trey and then Mike drives the jam into a deeper, loops-and-synth-filled space.
10/26/10: Is there a jam style called 'Galactic Calypso' yet?
10/26/10: Super-Manteca vibe now.
10/26/10: Really smooth transition into it, too.
10/26/10: Someone really needs to start screaming 'CRAB IN MY SHOEMOUTH' any time now.
10/26/10: Jam winds down > Mike's. Fantastic version of Light even if I didn't get my full transition into Manteca :)
10/26/10: Super heavy version of Mike's > Simple.
10/26/10: A typically gorgeous Simple jam gives way to Makisupa Policeman.
10/26/10: Makisupa -> Night Nurse > Makisupa. Very cool.
10/26/10: The Wedge gets a slightly extended jam, too.
10/26/10: Very late-set Ghost. Well, shucks.
10/26/10: This Ghost exploded hella early. Eleven minutes of SERIOUS GHOST HERE, FOLKS
10/26/10: Perfect transition into a great blissed-out space with repeating Trey riff. Building again now...
10/26/10: Outro bliss-riff and Mango Song riff interchanged with one another. That was amazingly
cool.
10/26/10: Mango Song outro gets buttslammed into Weekapaug!
10/26/10: Circular jam emerging from the end of Groove.
10/26/10: Ghost lyrics over the jam, now.
10/26/10: Night Nurse lyrics now.
10/26/10: Can You Hear Me Knocking jam now.
10/26/10: Full-on Llama reprise now.
10/26/10: Egregious misuse of the Show of Life encore after ending the second set in such a spectacular fashion :)
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