The Storm Has Lifted: Phish Brings Interesting Segues & Another New Song To Star Lake

Two days after having their show cut short by torrential rain, Phish returned to a sun-drenched stage Friday night, kicking off a two-day weekend at the Star Lake Pavilion outside Pittsburgh.

Sunshine both described the weather and the mood as they kicked things off in Burgettstown with “Party Time” Mike Gordon in his solar-bright outfit and drummer Jon Fishman laying down the calypso-rhythmic equivalent of sun-rays, and did I spy a beach ball bouncing around the bouncing crowd? With Trey Anastasio exclaiming “welcome everyone!” and an effective second “let’s get the show on the road” opener in “AC/DC Bag,” the mood was nothing short of sunny-day festive. But that didn’t last long, as the ensuing “46 Days” jam was pure ain’t-no-sunshine, Chris Kuroda lowering the lights over the band, somehow creating darkness before the sun went down, Page McConnell and Trey entering into whispered musical discussion, more innuendo than conversation.

The rest of the first set had the Vermont foursome creating noteworthy moments in interesting places. Fishman’s drum work was particularly impressive and expressive, finding dynamics across new axes, controlling the energy in “Birds of a Feather” playing both uptempo and quiet at the same time. After a bouncing-beach-ball “Bouncing Around the Room” and the start of “Stash,” party time was officially over.

As they moved into the jam section of “Stash,” Phish almost seemed to be daring the crowd to dance as they delved into a dark-for-the-first-set improvisation, rhythm and melody running counter to each other, Page’s piano pinging off Fish’s conga-line drumming, the band lost in a jungle where the wide leaves seem to block out the sunlight completely. A move to his Rhodes had Page draw Trey into the mix, bringing back some brightness, a flip to dare-you-not-to-dance energy, a thrilling peak that was hard to steer back to the “Stash” coda. They took this tight full-band jamming forward through “Leaves” and a dark af “Maze” into the set-closing, full-intro’d “Scents and Subtle Sounds,” the song that had been weather-shortened Wednesday. The jam in “Scents” started in almost Rebajam territory and then built from there, with each member adding his own ingredients to the musical potion, Mike triggering some triggering bass bombs that vibrated the whole amphitheater, Fishman snapping his snare as Trey matched on the drummed downbeat, and Page creating lovely melodies on the piano, so many things going on at once, all of them working.

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

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With every member of Phish asserting themselves in different ways in the first set, they each seemed to be ready to challenge the rest of their band in the second, creating an interesting dynamic as they moved through the set. McConnell was creating new melodic lines for the other three to respond to, Fishman pushed and pulled the rhythms, daring the rest to follow along, Gordon challenged his bandmates to maintain the groove throughout, and Anastasio seemed determined to create flow in the set, segueing from one song to the next, often without warning, and seeing if everyone could follow along.

Altogether, it created a distinct momentum for the second set which opened with “Sigma Oasis,” the band firing from the beginning, the improvisation bringing these multiple ideas from each of them together. With the sun now fully down, the “Sigma” jam was more phases-of-the-moon, with full moon bright sections, new moon dark ones, and all points in between. Waxing gibbous and waning crescent mixtures of light and dark, coherence and dissonance, were the most fascinating to try and follow. After more than 15 minutes of exploration, Trey pushed the first of many how-they-do-that? transitions, “The Final Hurrah” almost feeling like a new section of “Sigma Oasis.” The Kasvot Vaxt song opened up into its own bit of jamming, the perspective changing from the looking up at the phased moon to more of a we-are-floating-towards-the-moon feel, ambient textures from Mike and Page creating a cool vacuum for Trey to float through.

Another blink-and-it’s-done segue brought out the Phish debut of “Pillow Jets,” a song that felt made for Fishman with its references to thunder and plenty of room to accommodate his ever-impressive drumming. The ensuing jam found all four guys just shredding like teenagers rather than middle-aged rockers, with an open-ended energy that you don’t often find in a song’s live debut. “Pillow Jets” is one to watch.

At this point, the set’s modus operandi was fully established, Trey laying out another masterful segue into “David Bowie,” Fishman adding degree-of-difficulty rhythms that pushed everyone out of their comfort zone which is, coincidentally, Phish’s comfort zone. The “Bowie” was a controlled chaos of ideas, tension between all four members, Page establishing a melodic line that everyone digested and regurgitated, all while simultaneously keeping up with Fishman’s beats, all while simultaneously keeping it danceable on Mike’s bass groove, all while simultaneously at the ready for Trey’s next transition. Like many of the jams Friday night, it was not overly extended, but it was overly dense with ideas.

The so-called “fourth quarter” of the opening Star Lake show summed up all these ideas in an impressive one-two-three of -> “Cities” -> “Fuego” -> “Ruby Waves.” Deep Gordon-heavy funk of the Talking Heads cover propelled with a burning head of momentum into another slick-segued move to the goof-prog of “Fuego” which had Chris Kuroda bringing the lights low to add to the chaotic energy, before yet another seamless switcheroo to the set closer. Each segue was like the band using the gravitational field of one moon to slingshot it further and further from terra firma, “Ruby Waves” unleashing the grand full-band outer-orbit peak of the night, an earned climax to a set that, in retrospect, was building to it from the start. While the set and show featured no signature jam to hang its spacesuit on, the entirety of the night felt, to me, like a unique statement for a band still finding new ways to explore well beyond what would be expected, a satellite way out at the edge of the solar system, still occasionally sending back awe-inspiring images well after its expected lifetime.

Phish had one more interesting segue left in them, as the encore paired an uncharacteristically subdued “Character Zero” with a night-closing take on the ever-blissful “Slave to the Traffic Light,” the show’s final song eerily predicting the flow of traffic out of the parking lot. Hopefully everyone made it out of there and will be ready to do it again back at Star Lake Saturday night. Watch tonight’s show and the rest of Phish Summer Tour 2023 via LivePhish.com livestreams

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