My "will-he-EVER-get-to-fall-2021?!?!?" glacial-paced trek through Summer 2021 continues today with night 2 of Shoreline:
Not as insane a setlist as night 1, but it's about as crazy as you can expect based on what they already played!
9/1/21 Mountain View, CA
Mike's Song - Great 11 minute version to open! Right away the
energy is apparent from night 1. It's chill and funky, but not sleepy.
Really great "patient" soloing from Trey. Nobody is in a rush and we
have all night! The boys are grooving this sucker good! The guys are killing it. Slowly, it gains some serious heat and you can feel it "building". Trey is just tearing it up with the wah pedal. Seriously, this is some of his best soloing all summer, dang it!!! This
won't make any all-timer lists, but if you are looking for an
under-the-radar reading, check this out pronto! Absolutely TERRIFIC!!!
>The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday/Avenu Malcanu - Huh?! Just like that?! Outta nowhere?!? It almost kinda works!! Appropriately ramshackle considering the rarity, but still pulled off overall. Wow. Pretty dang neat!
>Weekapaug Groove - Groove is chill as hell and picks up right
where Mike's Song left off. I don't know how we got from TMWSIY back
into 'Paug, but somehow it worked. Don't ask me how. You won't even notice the transition, lol. This
Paug itself isn't anything to write home about but it gets the job
done, and as part of the larger whole opening trio, it's great.
Brian and Robert - Oh my sweet goodness, right in the
feels.....just gorgeous and reflective and nostalgic and all kinds of
wonderful....Please play this at my funeral....
Thread - And the hits keep coming!!! Why the hell don't they play
this more....It's only been played 7 or 8 times. That is total BS. This
version sounds super chill, as is 2021's wont. Sounds great though! It
actually sounds pretty tight and mostly lacks the "awkwardness" of other
versions. Trey's backwards guitar soloing sounds great on this. This is CHILL AS HELL but it fits it so perfectly tonight!!! And then come the wacky robot sounds from hell. 25-minute Threadpocalypse when?!
Killer version - honestly, this has to be one of the best of the few versions played. A+++++
The Wedge - Yes, thank you so much for finally playing it in it's proper set placement rather than shoving it in the 3rd quarter. All
in all, a very fine version that fits the set to a T, but nothing you
haven't heard a million times before done even better elsewhere.
Cities - 16 minutes long?! This is gonna be good! Absolutely TERRIFIC vibe on this one!!! The "takin' it easy" feel of tonight's first set does wonders for this. And jesus christ on a cracker, this sucker is stupendous. The jamming is SO FREAKING TASTY!!! Somewhere
around the 7 minute mark, Trey has the RoboHonker5000 activated. He
begins a repeating motif that the other guys latch onto. We are still in
Cities, but it is definitely moving out, so to speak. Around 8 minutes,
they all sync up on another funk progression like it's friggin' 1997 or
something. By 9 minutes, we are in chill, late-night funk mode, Trey
and Page playing melodic lines off of each other. Gordo has his own
robot synth FX going subtly in the background. Right at 9:30 the guys
stumble into a nice "twinkly" moment of bliss. Things start to move
again - Trey slowly begins to build the heat, giving us melodic leads
instead of picking out little notes. Gordo is honking it up on the bass
and Page is doing it nice-and-chill on the keys. The bliss is approaching. As with everything else tonight, the guys are playing so PATIENTLY
that instead of "rushing" to a bliss peak (like usual in 2021), the
guys take their damn time, taking several whole minutes, for once, to
keep building it!!! At 13 minutes Page moves to the piano and the chill
bliss starts to get a more powerful vibe, but only just. They spend the
next two minutes riding it gloriously to a close. This Cities was
must-hear!!! The jam stayed in one "zone" but never felt lacking in
direction or ideas!!! Super funky, but also super feel-good and chill at
the same time. Gorge #1 vibes. DON'T SLEEP ON THIS!!! YOU NEED TO HEAR
THIS!!!!!
>Passing Through - YO!!! WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT SEGUE!!!! CITIES
WAS DYING DOWN AND TREY JUST RANDOMLY - AND PERFECTLY - MOVED US INTO
PASSING THROUGH LIKE IT WAS WRITTEN OR SOMETHING!!! THAT WAS ONE OF THE
BEST GENUINE SEGUES EVER!!!! A++++++++ SEGUE!!!!!!!!!!!! Very
spirited reading of the song. It's only about 6 minutes, but it's got
that great, driving, Possum feel about it. Super cool stop-start,
Birds-of-a-Feather-style jam!!! Cue crowd going "woo!" 
KILLER!
>Fluffhead - And the segues-outta-nowhere keep coming!!! As with
TMWSIY>Paug, you'll go "wait, how the hell did we get into Fluffhead
without a trainwreck?!". Fluffhead is strong but not flub-free. It's a
little "loose around the edges", so to speak, like the 2019 Charleston
Reba, but at the same time it is nowhere near approaching "rough" or
"poor". This is a pretty perfect example of what a "tight" Fluffhead
sounds like in 2021, me thinks. Very good reading! And with that, the
set comes to a very triumphant conclusion! For the sake of not
highlighting everything, this Fluff isn't anything must-hear, but it is
still a very good reading!
All in all...holy hell what a set!!! It flowed like butter and the
VIBE was better than it had any right to be. This felt in league with
Gorge 2021 #1 - super CHILL as hell, but not sleepy in the slightest.
Great song selection and set placement. Most likely an underrated set -
go give this one a listen. The opening Mike's Song itself, the "probably
best one played so far" reading of Thread, as well as the insanely
strong Cities>Passing Through bit of fun are all essential listening
for the 2021 connoisseur.
Don't sleep on this set!!! It's a winner!!!! 
Set 2
The Lizards - What the hell?! When did The Lizards last OPEN a set?!?!
When all is said and done, like Fluffhead, it's not the tightest version
ever, but A+ for set construction freshness. I don't think it works as
set opener, but it's at least an interesting choice!!! Not really
anything special tonight but a fine version regardless!
Tweezer - A 34-minute Tweezer. Dis gon' b gud. Right away,
the "chill" vibe of set 1 is replaced by something much more urgent and
fiery! Check out the insane "build up" at 4 minutes before they drop
into the jam proper. Right around the 5:30 mark, the guys go into a
random-ass "American Woman" tease section. Pretty funny and lets you
know the guys are out to get weird!
Tweezer does its funky thing as expected (excellently, by the way), up
through about 8:30 when the first signs of true deviation appear. The
guys begin to move into the expected bliss-rock territory - Page on
piano, Trey doing feel-good melodic leads. Etc. Very cool moment around 10:20 where the jam begins to shift once more. Trey
hits upon a motif and then turns on some bliss-FX, leading Page to get
"swirly" on the piano and Fishman to get a little more exploratory on
the kit.
At 11:30 the aquatic-sounding keyboards make their appearance. Trey is
doing cool volume-pedal+delay stuff throughout. at 11:45 Fishman
increases the tempo and the jam gets quiet. Still moving forwards,
synths begin to creep in at the 12 minute mark. We are in the floating-down-the-lazy-river Type II style of watery bliss jamming. This
is terrific! The guys took their time reaching this point and the
organic evolution (rather than the "rushed" feel of recent jams) of it
REALLY is to it's benefit. By 13 minutes, the jam is a goopy,
syrupy, glorious mess of watery bliss. This is outstanding. Trey is
doing great wah pedal work, playing along rather than leading. Page is
killing it with those blaring THX synths.
Around 14:30, the jam takes another turn, getting heavier by the second.
But still slowly! Page moves to the piano and Gordo has his robo FX
turned on. Trey is tossing out perfect leads like butter. By 15:30, Trey
is using his backwards guitar FX and we are out of the water and back
onto land! Slowly, a strong rock vibe returns and you can tell we are at
the beginning stages of an ascension that will result in some kind of
hose peak!!! Give it time - don't rush it!! Trey is nailing it, just doing lots of grindy sustained bends, giving the jam a hefty sound.
By 17 minutes, things are beginning to get crazy. The RoboHonker5000
returns and Trey has set a looper of some spacey sounds. The tempo keeps
increasing and Fishman is ramping up the intensity more and more. This is one of the greatest "slow build" jams of the summer!! THEY ARE TAKING THEIR FRIGGIN TIME AND IT IS GLORIOUS!!!! The guys are building SO much heat, yet they refuse to unleash it!!!! We are BEGGING for a peak and they just keep teasing us!!!
Then right at the 19 minute mark, they derail the budding peak for a
super-funky stop-start jam that features the crowd going "WOO!" at
opportune moments.
This section causes the building rock and roll explosion to be
completely abandoned. The jam now moves into a super-chill section with
the guys doing a great rhythm-based jam, all playing "together" in the
best sense. And back to the bliss.
This jam is downright outstanding. This feels like listening to the
Alpharetta 2021 jams again or something. That initial "magic" from the
start of the tour is back!!!
By the 22 minute mark, Trey has stumbled upon a super nice
"quiet" motif, turning on his Leslie for a bit for great effect. Fishman
is keeping the drums very "jungle tribal" in a sense. Page is back on
watery keys, picking his spots oh so slowly. Around the 22:30 mark the
jam slowly begins to leave the bliss a little bit. They start that very
slow process of building it all back up from nearly nothing - insanely cool. By the 26 minute mark the previously abandoned rock-build is BACK IN BUSINESS BABY!!!
So by the 27 minute mark we are firmly in the makings of a hose peak. C'mon guys, you know you wanna! The intensity is building HARD
and Trey is just ripping it up. The guys are rocking the hell out,
Fishman is pounding those skins and Page is pounding the piano. LET'S GO!!!
.....NO! DANG IT!!! WHY!!!! Right at 27:50, Trey kicks on some wacky robot FX and COMPLETELY derails the building peak...Thankfully,
this leads to some super wacky and weird jamming that is all kinds of
cool, it's just annoying we had one of the greatest impeding peaks ever
sacrificed for it. Such is art, am I right? So now, at the 29 minute
mark, we are in full blown DYING ROBOT MELTDOWN mode!!!! What is even
going on! HOW DID WE GET HERE?!?!?!? I'm so CONFUSED!
By the 31 minute mark, the jam morphs into some weird, slow,
outer-space-blues jam with, I swear, teases of Split Open and Melt's
post-jam theme. How sick would it be if they followed that and went into
a Melt to close?! Too bad they don't, but they ride the SpaceRobot joyride for several glorious, meltdowny minutes.
If you like your Phish dark and STRANGE, this is your lucky day!!!
But then somehow, right at the 33 minute mark, they move immediately
into blissful ambience and bring this ridiculous MONSTER of a jam to a
fitting conclusion...
Holy hell.
What even was that. Now THAT was a jam. You can complain about the
47-minute Soul Planet, but you can't complain about this Tweezer. This
was a genuine all-timer. It was strange and adventurous, it took chances
and they paid off. It never peaked but that doesn't matter, you just
heard the best jam of the year so far besides the 8/6 Simple. Yes, I am
making that claim. This was something special. Good god. Honestly? It
was probably better than that Soul Planet (which is NOT overrated!)....
Miss You - Out of that "genuine all-timer" Tweezer monstrosity comes an insanely gorgeous and well-placed Miss You. Trey
literally picked the PERFECT song to follow that and nobody can tell me
otherwise. The flow..... good god this is terrific.....
>Piper - Eh, I'm calling that a loose segue. A very slow build on this out of Miss You, which works SO well!
Interestingly, the jam IMMEDIATELY goes for darkness rather than the
light you probably expect. THX synths and looper-repeats, etc. Like a
car racing out of control. It doesn't get as balls-to-the-wall as the
Atlantic City Piper from a few shows back, but this is still a strong
Type II detour for a few glorious minutes. It gets OUT THERE into
swirling outer space craziness QUICKLY! Then for the final minute or
two, you hear Trey signaling 20 Years Later. You dread the Piper death,
but know it's for the best as it's a great choice to go into and fits
perfectly.
>Twenty Years Later - Good god, they dive head first into the damn MUCK with this one! Trey
is using his octave down I think to sound like another bass guitar or
something! There isn't any incredible jam on this - the guys basically
just LAY INTO that damn repeating lick over and over and over, like bashing your skull against a concrete barrier. And it's glorious! Think of this as a conclusion to Piper rather than a proper jam of it's own and you'll have a great time!
>Twist - Surprisingly terrific. Twist is always great, but
this shorter one features extra mustard with inspired jamming
throughout. Nothing you haven't heard before, this is just done REALLY, REALLY
well!! A+ Type I Twist!!! Around the 7 minute mark it takes a totally
unexpected turn to darkness and Type II, but for some stupid reason they
jettison this in favor of.....
>Backwards Down the Number Line - REALLY?! That Twist was getting ready for liftoff.....Surely it had to be a curfew issue or something because they went Type II legit for the last minute of that Twist. Honestly
though? It's a great version! It gives us blissful relief to the
darkness sustained elsewhere. Better to leave with a smile on your face
than to be anxious and scared! This sucker just rages that Type I
goodness so perfectly. It's excellent. Great stuff!
A Life Beyond the Dream - Killer
Tweeprize - As expected
All in all....holy smokes what a set and what a show!!! Too bad
about the Soul Planet from the night before, because this Tweezer is 100
percent in contender for Jam of The Year (so far) otherwise (maybe it
still is?). THAT is what 2021 on a great night sounds like!!! The rest
of the set was no slouch either - the Miss You was outstanding and the
Piper>20 Years Later was a great "mini" slice of darkness worth a
listen. The whole show felt magical from start to finish and, honestly? I
think it was a better OVERALL SHOW than night 1. Night 1 was amazing as
well. This felt more "cohesive", even if the peaks were maybe slightly
smaller overall. Hard to explain. A definite A+ show. I'd say the 4.2
rating on.NET is accurate, but I'd probably give it another point or so,
KILLER SHOW!!!
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