Welp, it's the weekend, so that means onwards with 2021 in the "Proper Review Series" 
8/14/21 Atlantic City, NJ
SLOW Llama - !!!!! Hell yes. Slow Llama rules. Late-night lounge
funk - or something like that. Right off the bat the guys sound "tight"
and connected for sure. Page does some great synthesizer soloing while
Trey does ultra-watery wah/delay playing underneath that is all kinds of smooooottthhhhhh. This thing is 8 minutes long and makes stupendous use of it's runtime. If you like to hear Trey tearing it up TASTEFULLY with his new FX, this is the jam for you - the "honky bullfrog wah" thing is used to aplomb. This is one of the best things played in several shows!!!! This was DOPE-AS-HELL!!!! WOW!!!!!
Tube - Super chill, but also raging at the same time. Basically
picks up right where Slow Llama left off. Builds a hot head of steam
featuring a classic "Divided Sky sustain" note! Terrific Tube!!! A+ Type
I!!!!
Destiny Unbound - Ooh, didn't see that coming. Extra slow
and chill version. Sleepy. On another night I'd complain, but tonight
this leads to a unique jam that leans heavily into this chillness. It's
not even "bluesy" chillness, it's just straight up, ice-cold chill!!! Some
very nice soloing from all involved thanks to this. Really, really nice
Destiny, but I don't think it's highlight worthy. Great version
nonetheless!!!
Ya Mar - Oh no, it's way too slow and the intro is butchered..... 
Nice Page solo and overall nothing special. Unfortunately this Ya Mar is basically dead on arrival. BUMMER! Shame too, as it has a really nice final minute or so, but one minute is not enough to redeem this failure of a snooze-fest.
46 Days - ANOTHER SLOW SONG! JUST WHAT WE NEED! I've definitely heard way better versions (San Fran 2018 comes to mind), so
for the sake of pettiness I'm gonna say this one wasn't anything
special, but thankfully it was red hot (as every 46 Days is!) so it had
that going for it. Good stuff, but nothing essential.
Reba - Terrific reading of the composed portion! Sounded practiced and they NAILED IT!!! 
YAY! Really gorgeous solo on this one. Lots of interlocking Trey and Page. It's a Reba solo - you know what you are getting. And this Reba, for 2021, is TERRIFIC!!!! EXCELLENT! A+++++ No, seriously, this Reba kicks ass!
Soul Shakedown Party - Ooh! Nice! How weird that this is such a rarity and I just heard it this past week in one of the 2018 shows.... Great playing on this! Trey is REALLY learning to make good use of a well-timed delay!!!! This is terrific. A boatload of fun and musically rewarding at the same time.
Split Open and Melt - Ooh, an almost 16-minute Melt to follow! Feels a little odd coming after Shakedown, but I can almost
get with the set placement. As with the rest of this set, the song is
sleepy, almost sounding like something close to the studio recording in
that sense. The jamm quickly dissolves into nasty, atonal Type II as
expected until about 8:30. At that point a brief moment of bliss appears
and the jam sounds as if it wants to move elsewhere. This is just an
afterthought though as they leave this idea in the dust and return to
the honking robot noises and deep space avant garde.......This jam
sounds like a dying robot. This isn't exactly "listenable", but it's,
well....interesting? I guess? I love when the guys go deep and dark, but
my problem is them doing it because it is "expected" from a Melt (or a
Carini, etc), you know what I mean? Darkness for the sake of darkness. I
mean, hearing them score the soundtrack to a robot's death is nifty,
but it also doesn't exactly make for a great listen. It just sounds like
noise, lol. This is like that Miami 1989 Dark Star where everyone just
plays everything at once in a giant mess of sound. 
Ooooooohhh!!!
Right at 12 minutes the storm calms down but we don't move into bliss!!
Things are still minor-key and dark, just very calm! Like when the sky is black and you are waiting for those first lightning strikes to hit. Fishman introduces a march-type of beat and the guys, very slowly, begin to return us to something resembling MUSIC! A wonderfully organic passage follows with the guys all just hitting a chord, stronger and stronger each time, building us back to the Melt theme!!!! And then, right at 15 minutes, we get a PERFECT return and conclusion of Melt!!! THAT WAS GREAT!!!
The Squirming Coil - OF COURSE THEY HAD TO PLAY IT (what with all the beach references in the lyrics). Nice, as a change, to hear it close the first set!!! As with Reba, the guys NAIL the composed section of the song!!! Seriously, this might be the best played 3.0/4.0 Squirming Coil in a hot minute!!! An absolutely A+ reading of the song, and the cool-down into Page's eventual solo is just magical! Even the crowd acknowledges this and they elicit a roar long before the song has concluded. Several times, in fact!! WOW! TERRIFIC!!! I've got goosebumps!!
On the whole, I would say this set was a triumph! It wasn't the best of
the year, and nothing approached "true" must-hear aside from the opening
Llama and Tube and the wacky Melt (just to hear them claw themselves
out of it!), I don't think. The excessively chill mood (why did this
come on with Hershey and when will it leave?!) sometimes hampered the
set and others times bolstered it to great heights. A wonderful set for
the composed songs (Melt, Coil, Reba) that all turned in truly
excellent, if not completely "special" versions. A highly enjoyable set,
the only real skipper was the DREADFUL Ya Mar, but hey, ya can't win em
all!!!
Good stuff! Don't overlook this set!
Set 2
I Never Needed You Like This Before - YES! LETS ROCK! Only the third version so far, surprised it hasn't been beaten into the ground yet, lol. This sucker SMOKES! My head is a-bobbin'!!! Trey just lets it RIP! TERRIFIC OPENER! THIS KILLED!!!
Drowned - YES!! Perfect! A rare, 16 minute, reading of Drowned is up
next and keeps the intensity going. Cue the headbanging when the "5:15"
lick comes in. Right at 5:42 Trey signals the "start" of the jam proper
with a good old-fashioned Soul Planet delay slash. Page moves over onto
the electric keys for a lighter touch, but the momentum keeps going. We
are heading for bliss, that I can tell. Trey is carefully "picking" out
his notes rather than doing any kind of shredding. He's "playing along"
with the other guys. Around 7 minutes the jam changes ever so slightly. The sound and style are the same, but it gets ever so slightly more....driving? You can hear the difference but it's very subtle and hard to explain. At
7:45 the tempo picks up a bit and Fishman starts going nuts on the
cymbals, letting Trey turn on his Robo Honk 2000 fx unit and go to town
with cool little lines all over. But he quickly reverts back to his base
clean overdrive tone, content to let Page be the solo master
underneath. By 8:45 Fishman is doing all kinds of Neil Peart-esque tom
rolls, getting much more "active" on the drums. The jam is stuck
between slightly chill vamping and energetic rocking, like they are on
the verge of a Big Rock Explosion but keep holding back. Thankfully this doesnt last much longer and right about 10 minutes they shift into Major Key Type II Bliss Rock. Fishman
is still killing the kit, but everyone else start to play much
more....patiently, I guess? Patient and melodic. Fishman reacts by
throwing in more fills and alternating his patterns a bit. Page is on
the piano, hammering it out. By 11:30 Trey is still "noodling" it out,
so to speak and the jam is just flying down the road at 100 relaxed mph.
At 12:20, the Robo Goose Honk Master Deluxe 5000 makes it's glorious return! The jam makes a much-welcome and needed shift into an upbeat and funky, stop-start, call and response style jam!!! This is quickly morphing into, let's say, a good Crosseyed jam!!!! Tons of squealing robots and raging drum kit annihilation. Trey
even sets a robot honk on the repeater delay and then solos clean on
top, so you get a "BUZZ! BUZZ! BUZZ!" every few seconds underneath
everything. FRIGGIN COOL!!!! Guys, this jam is pretty damn
badass. I have caught myself involuntarily grinning!!!! And then as
quickly as we achieved proper liftoff, we drop IMMEDIATELY into
blissful ambience for the final minute, just like so many 2012-era jams.
Very nice and organic, but one can't help but wish they raged for a few
minutes more!!!
>Ghost - Love a good Ghost, but that transition really didn't flow that well. A great, rocking reading of the song!!! The jam gets off to a wonderfully unusual start - they immediately drop into a Late Night, Lounge Ghost chill funk groove, kinda like the opening Llama. They didn't rage into the jam - they started the jam chill! And it's wonderful! Very refreshing!!! Around the 5:20 mark or so, Fishman changes up the groove and turns this into a Late Night Reba Jam!!!! Yes, picture a Curtain With or Reba solo section with a 1998 chill factor applied! Right
at 6:20 Trey holds the most PERFECT sustained note I've ever
heard!!!!!!!! And we have heard a few!!! It goes on for over 60
seconds!!!!!!! He is just holding this damn note until the cows
come home, but it's lower on the neck, so it's got a darker feel than
the peaky Divided Sky notes. The band pick up on this and a budding
darkness begins to brew underneath. Gordo and Fishman are slowly getting
heavier and heavier, increasing the INTENSITY of the jam with
each passing second. This darkness begins to morph from anxious darkness
into blissful sunshine around 8:30 when Page jumps on the electric
piano. AND TREY IS STILL HOLDING THAT DAMN NOTE HOLY MOTHER OF GOD!!!!! Is he using a friggin' E-bow or something??!!! Lol. I'm pretty sure he has looped the held note at this point and is soloing on top of it. THIS IS UNIQUE AS HELL!!! By
9:45, they can't seem to decide whether to keep things dark or head for
the light and are riding that fine line. Trey is slowly picking lines
out on top of that repeating sustain. Page is back hammering at the
piano, and Fishman is just killing the kit, going for intensity and
tribalism. At 11 minutes, Trey begins a repeating motif that the rest of the band latch onto and build off of. And from there we SOAR to the heavens!!!! THIS IS X FACTOR MAGIC!!!! THIS IS INCREDIBLE!!!!
THAT WAS HANDS-DOWN, WITHOUT QUESTION, THE
SINGLE BEST JAM PLAYED SINCE THE 8/6 Blaze On and Simple. NOTHING from
the following shows has reached those heights like this Ghost did. AND
THIS GHOST WAS ONLY 11 MINUTES!!!!!!!!!! WHAT THE HELL?!??!
>Scents and Subtle Sounds - Ok, I'm kinda mad about that
INCREDIBLE jam being shoved aside like that, but c'mon, that segue into
Scents was pretty damn unexpected and cool! But
alas, it is not to be as this is the infamous "unfinished" Scents. The
band plays an absolutely magical reading of the song proper - you can just hear the "magic" at work, so to speak. That feeling, ya know what I mean. The
song begins a super chill jam at 4 minutes that is very cool, Trey
laying into his wah and Page doing oh so perfect keyboard work.
AND THEN DANG IT TREY YOU FREAKING MOOD KILLER! WHY! WHY!? WHY?!
THAT WAS GOING SOMEWHERE!!!!! THAT WAS GOING SOMEWHERE AWESOME!!!!!
>Chalkdust Torture - I absolutely
can't believe I'm getting cheesed off about getting a Chalkdust, but
holy hell that was the biggest blue-ball experience of my life! I guess
Trey just wasn't feeling Scents tonight and wanted to rock though, so
I'll take it. I can't complain about rocking, as terrible as that
abortion of Scents was! Chalkdust itself sounds slightly sheepish, as if
Trey is going "Yea, I know I screwed up, woops, lol" Thankfully the jamming quickly reaches fever pitch around 4:30.
Listen to Fishman just going all BOAF on this sucker! The
jam on this never escalates enough and just is kinda awkward, but they
are trying. In the end this ends up sounding like a continuation of the
Melt jam or something. Just awkward and weird, lol. "Do we rock out? Do
we get weird?" In good conscious I can't highlight this because it is so
DISJOINTED and for the fact that it killed that budding Scents, plus
the fact that it dies a death without any kind of peak.
That was like a weird....trainwreck? That was one of those oddball
versions you have to hear to understand. It was actually pretty
enjoyable on the whole, but the context of it was terrible. And then the
weird-as-hell ending of it was just CONFUSING! Yes, THATS THE WORD!
CONFUSING!!!!
THAT CHALKDUST WAS FRIGGIN CONFUSING! That was like a roller
coaster ride that you get off of, head spinning, and go "what the hell
just happenned?", but not in a good way
>No Quarter - THANK YOU SWEET LEO FOR LEADING US INTO SOMETHING GOOD AGAIN! And
thank goodness No Quarter kicks ass! No Quarter doesn't go anywhere
deep, but this is a red-hot Type I reading that delivers exactly as you
want it to. Awesome.
Slave to the Traffic Light - Again with the
"not so sure about that" set placements tonight. Feels jarring coming
immediately out of the darkness of No Quarter, but I'm sure I'm in the
minority on this. Good version but have heard MUCH better. Not worth a
highlight tonight. Bog standard unimpressive Slave.
Suzy Greenberg - See Slave above. Good stuff, but nothing really impressive or super hot.
A Life Beyond the Dream - Perfectly placed after all the weird
fire this show spat. Extremely triumphant sounding tonight. I won't say
it's the greatest of all time, but it's EXACTLY what was needed right
now!!! AWESOME!!!! It's like the perfect "exclamation point".....
Tweeprize - Is Tweeprize. Kills it.
All in all.....the beginning of the set up through the aborted
Scents was - HANDS DOWN - the best stuff played in several shows. The
Ghost itself, despite the 11 minute run-time, was ABSOLUTELY the best
jam they have played since 8/6 and it's not even close. They were
grasping magic with that only for it to slip from their hands....Then
you have the "what the hell did I just listen to/what the hell just
happenned" Chalkdust that tries hard but completely loses confidence in
itself and gives up. Follow that with a must-hear No Quarter and a
good-but-nothing-special final act to close.
What the hell happenned tonight?!
This was one of the strangest shows ever. It had a lot of incredible
stuff coupled with a lot of "average" stuff coupled with a lot of weirdo
stuff.
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