January In July: Phish Debuts 1st Song From Trey Anastasio & Page McConnell Album At The Garden

Phish continued their seven night run at Madison Square Garden Sunday night and the keyword for me was proliferate: sights, sounds and ideas multiplying, growing, mutating and evolving. Even before the show, my inbox was abuzz with friends whose plans seemed to be evolving, “I’ll just catch one night” turning into “well, maybe three or four?,” flights getting changed, tickets secured. And after the first two nights, who could blame them?

Rumors and conjecture about setlist choices and encore numerology spread like wildfire on social media, the more ridiculous the theory, the further it seemed to travel. All this contributed to the exponential growth of energy inside the arena as the band took the stage, bassist Mike Gordon in neon green, a color that seemed to multiply on its own, spreading to the donuts on drummer Jon Fishman’s dress and even guitarist Trey Anastasio‘s shirt and suddenly all I can see is shades of green in the lights that accompanied the opening “AC/DC Bag.”

The jam in “Bag” immediately went viral, the quartet moving along multiple deviations, first Trey, then Mike, then keyboardist Page McConnell moving to the Fender Rhodes electric piano, each playing their own different improvisations, all playing the same jam. Fishman slowed it down, then sped up, then it went ambient, a proliferation of styles such that within 15 minutes the band had covered more ground than any rumor could.

“My Friend, My Friend” was up next, Chris Kuroda’s lights following along, a geometric explosion of stripes, zig-zags, right angles, and various other Tetris shapes filling The Garden. Within the song, Jon Fishman’s beats seemed to multiply and mutate on their own and then “My Friend” went extra dark, opening into yet another jam, Anastasio going evil, Gordon even eviler, finally McConnell getting onto the organ and going full horror-film evilest.

The improvisation-heavy first quarter of the show built to “Bathtub Gin,” the band clearly feeling it. While the “AC/DC Bag” had gone into so-called “Type II” territory with melodies mutating from the song’s main structure, the “Gin” jam went “Type II” in tempo only, the band first going slow, slow, slow, creating and using space at the same time, the melody stuck around the “Gin” theme as the pace picked up, dropped off, and then picked up again.

While great playing can beget more great playing, sometimes mistakes can proliferate, too, and the beginning to the ensuing “Theme From the Bottom” was particularly error-prone in ways that were difficult to pin down. But the goofs can also create uniqueness and the four of them seemed to work extra hard to get things back on track, going into some deep listening that made for a middle jam that found some very strong conversational interplay.

“Theme” would end up being the newest song played in a first set that finished with a head-of-steam proliferation of energy, “Llama” cascading in an avalanche of boom-pow intensity, played at tempo maximus and prompting jokes from Trey about repeats that evolved into multiple “back in my day” goofs before he started up “Tube.”

Sometimes “Tube” jams a bit and sometimes it doesn’t and sometimes you get a version like Sunday night’s at The Garden with grooves giving birth to grooves giving birth to grooves, each one building on the next, the DNA of the jam changing along the way, the entire arena evolving into an ecstatic dance party before the set closed with an old school “Golgi Apparatus.”

Read on after The Skinny for the rest of the recap and more.

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If the songs played in the first set were a demonstration on how Phish’s material from the early ’90s can continue to be a platform for the proliferation of musical ideas, the second set’s song selections highlighted the step-by-step evolution of their sound in the “modern day.” Of course, this being Phish, it wasn’t quite linear, but the set served as a showcase of the last two decades of the band.

Set two opened with “Sigma Oasis,” a “new” song that’s already four-years-old. While it can often be a platform for deep improvisation, Sunday’s version was straightforward, highlighted by Kuroda’s evolving light rig, a candy store color palette transfiguring in space above the crowd. The debut of “Life Saving Gun” of the McConnell/Anastasio release January showed just how far their compositions have evolved and how the evolved songwriting has tracked with the improv.

Where “Sigma Oasis” represents a bright bliss jam mode, “Life Saving Gun” with its dark lyrical themes, was driven by Fishman’s proliferation of rhythms, tempo being the modus operandi of the current age of jamming. The improv out of “Life Saving Gun” was forward looking, and ended up being the inverse of the “Gin” jam from a similar spot in the first set. Instead of mixing tempos to create new space, Fishman seemed to lock in on a single speed and drum pattern while the other three proliferated musical ideas, hitting every mood on the mood wheel along the way.

“No Men In No Man’s Land” created opportunity for other modes of improv, with a peaks-begetting-peaks start to the jam that eventually made way for a settled-in ambient float that evolved into a rather glorious full-band exploration, beautiful interplay evolving to even more beautiful, one style giving birth to the next, small changes yielding big ones over time.

A mid-set cool down pairing of “Lonely Trip” and “Frankie Says” drew into sharp focus the evolution of the quiet contributions to the Phish repertoire. The former finding meaning in the lyrics, kind-hearted solos from Page and Trey accenting the universal themes, the latter creating a psychedelic cocktail of woozy ambiance and hallucinogenic imagery.

The that-was-then/this-is-now compare-and-contrast of the band’s evolution over the past two decades and the proliferation of musical themes and directions therein came to its climax in the set-closing dyad of “Gotta Jibboo” -> “Light.” It was, to say the least, a strong, strong fourth quarter Sunday night as the “Jibboo” took Phish’s turn-of-the-century vibes and brought them to modern day. The ambient boogie transformed and transmuted, ideas becoming new ones and those becoming new ones, a musical game of telephone amongst the four members and then percolating through the audience.

The set-closing “Light” was an ecstatic acme for the show. As it had all night, the band did not hesitate to big bang their way into deep improvisation, a rapid expansion in every direction, a proliferation of subatomic particles of sound. This was big do-no-wrong Phish at their finest, the band operating as a single unit with a single focus, at one with the rapt, arms-raised audience showing what four decades of playing and proliferating together leads to.

The encore was another A/B way of looking at Phish’s evolution. “Suzy Greenberg” a look way back at the band’s early beginnings, a way of saying “this is where we came from,” while getting a sold-out MSG to sing along at the top of their lungs to the ridiculousness that was birthed back in mid-1980s Vermont. How far they’ve come and yet how easily the oldest material fits next to the new. But of course, the band’s evolution did not begin in the ’80s, it started even earlier, in the influences to each member’s playing and while their are many, Hendrix is as big as any, especially when you consider the massive arena-rock machine-gun energy of a show at Madison Square Garden.

Trey didn’t hesitate to punctuate the night with Hendrix’s “Izabella,” a full-throated shred-a-thon, perfectly executed, reminding us all that for all the evolution and proliferation over the years, Phish is, at its heart, just a rock band. And a darn good one at that.

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Phish’s Madison Square Garden residency continues tomorrow, Tuesday August 1. Watch livestreams of the MSG shows and the rest of Phish Summer Tour 2023 via LivePhish.com.

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