The Verdict:
Phish opens the four-night MGM Halloween run by offering up a quintessential Summer '15 show in Fall '16: the first set is one of those deals that's half-perfect/half-jukebox, and the second set starts off with a monster jam sequence, only to fade out in the fourth quarter and finish weakly.
That, of course, is not to say this is a bad show. On the contrary, everyone loves Summer '15, right? RIGHT?! Well, then, this is right up our past alley.
The first half of the first set is strong, with a mixture of strong takes on predictable songs ("Martian Monster," "No Men," "Limb By Limb") and less predictable songs ("Dogs Stole Things," "Beauty of My Dreams," "Destiny Unbound"). The second half features a neat, brief little echo-y jam post-"Steam," but that gets chopped abruptly after a minute or so for "The Wedge." After that, everything is pretty forgettable. It's not that the playing is bad at all; rather, we've just heard it all before.
The big story in the second set is of course the monster "Golden Age," but it's worth mentioning that before that the guys bust out "Crimes of the Mind" as the set opener. So there's that.
The "Golden Age" proper is a beast. At over twenty-five minutes long, it visits a lot of fantastic locations, and departs from the Type I jam nearly immediately. There are two huge peaks, and one of them relies mostly on loops and dissonance to get there. It's hard to explain, but an absolute joy to hear. So you should hear it.
As if this beautiful jam isn't enough by itself, the band segues (->) perfectly into "Simple" to follow up. This jam is much shorter, but dissolves intriguingly near the end as the whole band bends toward dissonance...leaving "Light" room to emerge.
Now, this "Light" is always going to exist in the shadow of the massive "Golden Age" jam that proceeds it, and that's a shame, because it's great on its own. It starts by heading in the usual "Manteca"-style route, but quickly gets darker while maintaining the same salsa style. From there, the tension grows thanks to a looping riff from Trey and we descend yet again into muddy darkness before the jam ends.
From there, there's a tonally appropriate move into "Twenty Years Later," but it's a rough version, and like the second half of the first set, this fourth quarter never really gets back on the rails. It's a small criticism considering that the first near-hour of music in this set is pretty much perfect...but, it was the one repeated criticism of Summer '15, and the tendency to leave second sets unfinished rears its head again here.
Overall, though, I should stress that this is an excellent show, and I'm looking forward to three more.
The Live Review:
10/28/16: MGM run starting now with Martian Monster.
10/28/16: > No Men. A nice, swinging solo from Trey almost immediately.
10/28/16: Nice run through No Men's. After a long pause, Dogs Stole Things!
10/28/16: I had never actually heard this tune until it opened the second Tahoe show in '11. Loved it since.
10/28/16: Beauty of My Dreams! I haven't heard it in so long it took me a minute to figure out what it was.
10/28/16: > Destiny Unbound. Rarity set?!
10/28/16: Great little Type I jam in Limb By Limb. I feel like is another one of those songs, like Tube, that's currently growing out a bit.
10/28/16: Home next. This version sounds tighter than the debut version, but the song still just doesn't sound as punchy...or something live
10/28/16: Home outro jam getting shredded a little bit.
10/28/16: When the Circus Comes next, then Steam. Liking the construction of this set.
10/28/16: Really liking Trey's distorted soloing in Steam, with Page backing w/ organ chords.
10/28/16: Quick left turn into ambient drone from the Type I Steam jam.
10/28/16: Short ambient jam segues into The Wedge. Which was super-weird.
10/28/16: Cavern.
10/28/16: Walls.
10/28/16: First set started off huge (w/ rarities and verve) but got a little jukebox-y by the end.
10/28/16: That weird ambient jam > The Wedge moment felt like a turning point in a bad way. Strong set overall anyway, though.
10/28/16: End set.
10/28/16: Crimes of the Mind opens up the second set. That has to be a huge bustout, right?
10/28/16: 283 shows.
10/28/16: Golden Age is next.
10/28/16: Golden Age jam starts out Type I, but quickly dissolves under a cloud of Trey's echo-chording.
10/28/16: Neat noodly, almost salsa-like jam now. Sounds like something that might come out of Undermind.
10/28/16: Neat melody solo from Trey now. Sounds a bit like WTU? and a bit like the outro to Lizards.
10/28/16: Looping build. Giant Golden Age. More evidence for my theory that '16's 'slumps' have been about jettisoning bliss jamming as...
10/28/16: ...the sole avenue to Type II.
10/28/16: This is rad. Dissonant looping somehow leads to a peak. That doesn't even make sense, but yet it works.
10/28/16: Calming now.
10/28/16: Jam continues with funk chording.
10/28/16: Loops from the peak continue softly in the background.
10/28/16: Great organ work from Page right now as Trey plays a highly distorted version of what almost sounds like the Sand riff.
10/28/16: This is like two different notes away from being a literal Sand jam.
10/28/16: Flawless -> Simple. It sounds like the roof is coming down in MGM.
10/28/16: Fantastic monster jam there. Did not see that coming.
10/28/16: Band clicking again immediately as Simple jam starts.
10/28/16: Trey has been playing like he just stepped off the FTW stage for most of fall.
10/28/16: Page doing a great job of filling empty spaces with his piano and Trey and Mike play off each other.
10/28/16: Pitch shifter and distorted bass. Things getting deconstructed.
10/28/16: Dissonance > Light.
10/28/16: Distorted Manteca-like jam coming out of the Type I.
10/28/16: Manteca-type jam has sort of turned in on itself. Really tension-y now. Trey playing a short, looping riff over and over.
10/28/16: Dark, spacey jam winding down now into more ambient noise.
10/28/16: Nice fade into Twenty Years.
10/28/16: I realize it's unfair to demand that Phish does something interesting with a particular song, but I love 20 Years Later...
10/28/16: ...lyrically and as a rare dark(ish) tune in their quiver. However, the outro jam always just sounds like a dirge.
10/28/16: The overly distorted tone Trey's using here makes it sound even more like we're at a funeral for the fourth quarter of this show.
10/28/16: I feel a little bit the same way about Fuego when they don't play with the outro. Or Wingsuit. Yeah, we get it!
10/28/16: Late-set Blaze On.
10/28/16: Short-but-hot Blaze On leads into Coil.
10/28/16: Sounds like a Page outro this time instead of Mike.
10/28/16: Encore is, strangely, Bouncin' and Bold As Love.
10/28/16: Neither set ended particularly gracefully, but the first set was a great mix of well-played old, new, and busted-out tunes...
10/28/16: ...and the second set opened with friggin' Crimes of the Mind and had a legendary Golden Age -> Simple > Light sequence.
10/28/16: I don't care that much that the fourth quarter was a bit weak, honestly.
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