This, night two of the comeback run, is just a fun show. I vaguely remembered, thinking back to playing these three shows ad nauseum between March and June '09 after getting them as free (!) downloads from livephish.com, that this had been my favorite of the three nights. I have yet to give night three a replay, but I can already see why I loved this night so much. Impeccable song choices, great setlist flow for both sets, and a lot of great little moments. The only thing this show is really lacking is a huge, spotlight jam for everything else to coalesce around. If night one was a technical triumph with the "Fluffhead" and "Divided Sky" one-two punch, night two is a triumph of good music, played well, for almost three hours.
The first set is largely song-based, and starts off with versions of "Back on the Train" and "Runaway Jim" that are each propelled by fiery Trey solos. No whale pedal here. It's fun to hear "Heavy Things," "Gumbo," and "Mexican Cousin," and "Reba" is a solid, though not earth-shattering version. I'm a sucker for "Beauty of a Broken Heart," so that might be have been the set highlight for me.
Set two was obviously meant to go deep. I mean, "Rock and Roll" > "Limb By Limb", followed by "Ghost" > "Piper" > "Birds"? That's a full, 90-minute set right there by '90s standards. Here, it doesn't flow quite as nicely as it looks on paper, but there are still some highlights. The last few minutes of the "RnR" jam are spacey as all hell and the segue into "LxL" is pretty magical. In fact, this is probably the highlight of the whole show for me. "Ghost" is a close second, though, with a proto-plinko jam that turns into a shredfest near the end. For the first "Ghost" of 3.0, it's a keeper, for sure. The segue into "Piper" is shaky, and the song doesn't really go anywhere, but again, just as Trey starts some rapid-fire funk strumming, the band transitions really naturally into "Birds," which turns out to be an average-great version, if a bit short. I can't understate how great it is to hear these smooth segues, though; even at the band's current (arguably much higher) level of playing, they don't segue like this very often. They really sell the first and third transitions in this set, and it's exciting.
The great song choices continue with "Wolfman's" and "Prince Caspian," which are both solid versions as well, but nothing to mail an entire letter home via the Post Office about. "Mike's" is a surprisingly entertaining whale-y shred, though Trey drops the ball toward the end. He recovers nicely for "Hydrogen" and "Weekapaug" has a few machine-gun guitar moments worth hearing. The show wraps up with a swampier-than-usual "Zero" and "A Day in the Life," which is maybe my all-time Phish encore song.
So yeah: a really fun show with a lot of well-played songs that would definitely be on my "want" list for a three-night run all crammed into one show in a way that works. If you're looking for something deeper, though, this probably isn't your show.
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