2009-07-31 Red Rocks II

So, clearly I was a bit excited by Red Rocks I. Well, it turns out that Red Rocks II takes everything that was great about the first night and makes it better. It's sort of nuts how quickly it happens: as I mentioned in the last review, it was sort of incredible to listen to the first night of the run and have it blow away everything that came before. Well, it was even more exciting to listen to the second night and have that blow everything that came before that away. But it happened.

We get some well-played, choice openers off the bat with "Jim" and "Chalkdust," but things get cranking in earnest with "Bathtub Gin." I've explained my frustration with long "Gin" jams in the current era before: they are generally just Trey wankfests and nothing worth getting excited about. This version, though, is the rare 3.0 "Gin" where everybody's in on the fun, and the result is a lot more satisfying...and then there's "Time Turns Elastic."

Honestly, the rest of the set before the ending "Melt" isn't worth saying much about. It's a run-of-the-mill series of songs that get average versions, none of which are a song that I typically get excited about in the first place. Actually, for as great as this show's second set is, there's not much in the first set worth recommending. It's a good setup for what's to come, but I feel like 3.0 so far has actually featured a lot of legitimately great first sets...and this isn't one of those. The "Melt," though...the "Melt" I like, for once. The jam is abstract and noisy, at times just plain shrieky, and actually recalls some of Wilco's weirder noise-rock jams (which might be why I like it so much). Near the end, there's even some strange yelling (probably from Fishman) a la "Sanity." So, which this isn't a groundbreaking first set by any means, I suppose it's interesting in that it got me to enjoy two of the songs I usually sort of roll my eyes at.

The second set is so damn good that it just doesn't make any sense. I'm convinced they through the "Joy" in the middle just to keep from killing the audience via high-temperature facemelt.

Anytime you see a setlist that starts with "Drowned" > "Crosseyed and Painless," you know that I just screamed for joy somewhere in America. The "Drowned" here is pretty much straight Type I jamming throughout, but it's solid and multilayered...however, the highlight is really the perfect segue into "Crosseyed." The "Crosseyed" itself, maybe the highlight of the set (or the year, or the universe), can be summed up with one word: momentum. This is like an old-school Phish jam: there are no obvious "movement" changes, nor is there any particular feel (funk, ambient, etc.) throughout. Instead, every single moment of the jam seems create at that moment, yet somehow it all fits together to turn into one careening train of adrenaline. I wouldn't call this the most experimental jam of 3.0 so far, but it's one of the most cohesive, and, again, it recalls the Phish of yore in the way that everyone just keeps throwing ingredients into the pot until it seems like it has to overflow, but it never quite does. There's a nice Mike and Page led segue into "Joy" at the end, but then "Joy" is just "Joy."

Then there's maybe my favorite "Tweezer" in a year's worth of good "Tweezer"s (sort of like the "Ghost" last night). Here's what I wrote as I listened:

extra funky, loose intro to tweeeeeze. this is great, too. total funk weirdness built around page and his spook-noise machines. the riff they take off on after the spook segment is great. this is just goddamn retarded. this is probably better than the ghost and the C+P jam put together, which are each better than all of fucking early summer. wow.

The "Tweezer" then features another perfect segue into "Number Line," which doesn't go anywhere special, but is a barn burner and a fitting companion to its monster-jam brother.


But we're not done yet. There's a late-set "Fluffhead" that is played as tightly as can be, and the outro jam suddenly and unexpectedly breaks up into a bunch of tension-building guitar fuckery from Trey before relieving the tension by YET ANOTHER perfect segue into "Piper"!

Here's what I wrote about the "Piper":

piper morphs from the tension and release stuff that's been happening for most of the night's serious jams into a rock and roll showcase about halfway through. great stuff (again). great piano outro into a day in the life. GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL

The "Suzy" > "Tweeprise" encore is just the icing on the cake here. If you allow a little slack for the uninspired first set, this second set is easily the best set of music I've heard since Hampton (including Camden and Alpine II and Red Rocks I, which were all amazing). Word on the street is that Red Rocks III is better than this, but I can't imagine how...


Full show below. Watch the second set if you care about Phish at all. It's just stupid good: