I picked up the new Phish album at a midnight sale tonight at my trusty local independent music shop. (CD Central–if you’re ever in Lexington, look 'em up, and Steve will do you right). I thought I’d offer my thoughts on the first spin, since I know there are a few other fans around here.
The weird thing about a new Phish album is that most fans already know the songs. There are only two tracks on the album that I hadn’t heard before (“Sleep” and “The Inlaw Josie Wales”), and only three that I didn’t have lying around on tape somewhere. (I’ve somehow missed “Gotta Jiboo”.) I first heard “Piper” and “Dirt” at Deer Creek three years ago, at my second and third shows.
The worst trap you can fall into in thinking about a Phish album, though, is comparing it to their shows. By their own admission, they are trying to transcend their reputation as a purely live act and produce a desert-island quality studio album. Another trap is to expect such a studio album to “capture their essence”–to distill the entirety of the Phish experience onto a 72-minute CD. If that were even remotely possible, why would folks collect hundreds of hours of live shows on tape and follow the band around all summer?
I can’t say this is the essential disc they’ve been seeking, but it is a very enjoyable album. It is, for what it’s worth, probably Phish’s most straightforward studio album, lacking much of the weirdness found on “Billy Breathes” and “Story of the Ghost”. Only three of the twelve songs come in at over five minutes, the longest being the album-closing instrumental “First Tube” at 6:46. (This from the band that rang in the new year with a midnight-to-sunrise set.)
As intended, the album finds its strength in the songs rather than the band’s acrobatic playing. “Farmhouse”, “Bug”, and “Back On The Train” are the kinds of tracks you find yourself singing without realizing it, songs that seem familiar even when you do hear them for the first time. “Sand” is as much of a butt-shaking groove as you’re likely to get from four white guys from Vermont, but they don’t take the riff and lean on it like they normally would–they just let it work within the structure of the song.
The two new tracks (to me) are definite products of the studio. “Sleep” is a quick (2:07) bout of very nice vocal harmony. “The Inlaw Josie Wales” is an understated acoustic instrumental, reminiscent of “Faht” (aka “Wyndam Hell”) from Rift and “Steep” from Billy Breathes. This offers a chance to play with subtlety that can’t really get across in arenas of screaming fans.
Much as they did the otherwise fine “Story of the Ghost”, Phish seems intent on including one live classic that just doesn’t transfer to the studio setting. (On SOTG it was “Guyute”, which was inexplicably edited to a slim nine minutes by excising some key passages.) Here it is “Piper”. Less a song and more a concept, this song live has always been little more than a six-measure riff that builds and builds until an appropriate fever pitch is met, at which time they add the cryptic three-line vocal refrain. It isn’t done justice here in four and a half minutes, and it lacks the energy that makes it work so well in concert. It isn’t really bad here, or unwelcome, but it really doesn’t add to the album or gain anything itself.
The other thing the album lacks is the natural flow found on most of their studio works (particularly the last few). This seems much more like a collection of songs than a cohesive album–which isn’t a bad thing, just different. The strength of the songs more than makes up for it.
If you like Phish, there really isn’t much reason not to like this album. Unlike most of their other work, though, I would recommend this disc the uninitiated–if the endless noodling has kept you away, this album might get you interested. It’s not going to become a mega-hit, or un-seat the boy bands from the top of the charts, but it is a very enjoyable album with enough quirkiness to make it unmistakably Phish.
Dr. J
