2024-02-23 Riviera Maya, MX

 2/23/24 Riviera Maya, MX

Set 1

Set Your Soul Free - A plucky, 11 minute SYSF opens the show and gets us dancing off the rip. A very, very nice - but standard - Type 1 version that rocks along and climaxes with an absolutely soaring double peak!!! Threatens to go deep when Page's synths start to creep in, but alas 'twas not to be. Great start to the show!

>Ghost - Great segue you hear coming from a mile away. Another 11 minutes or so on this one. Right away, the jam drops into a very laid-back and watery kind of zone. Gordo is dropping bombs everywhere. Subtle synths in the background providing spooky texture. Then at the 4 minute mark things pick back up very suddenly - Trey playing with backwards guitar FX and whatnot. Very cool. By the 6 minute mark, the weirdness is subsiding and very slowly we are moving into an upbeat bliss area. Slowly working towards some kind of peak zone, the synths and the loopers and the robo FX come out to play, but all are used very sparingly as textural accompaniment rather than in-your-face wackiness. By the 9 minute mark all that goes away and the guys just go straight into rocking-the-F-out and rage this sucker to a conclusion.

That was a GREAT little Ghost!!! It was like a 20 minute jam smooshed into 10 or something. There was a LOT going on in a small amount of time! Don't overlook it!!!

>Fast Enough For You - THEY PLAYED FAST ENOUGH!!!! THEY ACTUALLY PLAYED IT!!!! AND THAT WAS A SEGUE TOO! And golly it's great. Sounds like they never stopped playing it. Wonderful stuff.

Evolve - Is Evolve. Sounds great as ever. Don't really NEED to highlight it, but know that it's as beautiful and excellent as every other version of Evolve out there. Great stuff, but you've heard it before.

Mull - I can't get enough of this song and seemingly every version gets better than the last. As with Evolve, this really doesn't need to be highlighted as you've heard it all before, but it's still great.

46 Days - The song goes as usual until the 3:45 point when it suddenly starts to rise to the sky in a robot-lave-like fashion. Nuclear reactor meltdown! Take cover! AND MELTDOWN IT DOES!!! YES!!! For two glorious, fire-from-the-sky minutes, the world explodes and they melt our faces into puddles in the sand. Short but oh so sweet!!!! Dang!

Kill Devil Falls - An excellent, 12 minute KDF is up next. Gets a little funky at the start of the jam but they quickly abandon that and head straight on into "tear your head off" type I. But wait, there's more! Right at the 6:45 point, things get much more rhythmic and Trey kicks on multiple robo FX. We are going Type II into the squiggly wormhole! Things get VERY weird VERY fast and by the 8 minute point we are hurtling through outer space at 100mph, loopers and robo FX abound! They stay in orbit for several incredible minutes, using every strange sound and effect in their sonic arsenal, leaving planet Earth FAR in the rearview mirror. Just sit back, strap in, and enjoy the G forces. Around the 11 minute mark things start to get very dark and growly. It's honestly pretty scary! And then suddenly it all comes to a conclusion....

>Wading in the Velvet Sea - My golly. That transition from dark space into the emotional waters of the Velvet Sea was just.... * chef's kiss * Velvet Sea is Velvet Sea - slow and gorgeous in all the right places, extra powerful tonight coming out of space like that. Fishman is pounding the daylights outta his kit on this one.

Sigma Oasis - And Sigma to close the set. Holy mother of crap this sucker just SOARS!!!!!! RIGHT TO THE SKY!!! A+++++++++++++++++++++++++ Sigma!!!! Sigma is always great but this one is next level!!!! SICK!!!



All in all - zero somplaints with this set! It got going good early with SYSF and that "so much going on" Ghost before a meltdown 46 Days and that pure outer space Type II rocket ride of a Kill Devil Falls!!! The Velvet Sea coming out of it with Sigma to end the set was set construction perfection. And of course we can't forget the uber-rare Fast Enough For You!!! This set felt like taste of greatness to come and was hands down one of the best first sets of recent times, imo. Just stellar from start to finish. Wowzers!

Set 2

Blaze On - Nearly 13 minutes on this one. Proceeds as standard hot Type 1 all the way until the 11 minute mark. Suddenly the jam dies down all quiet-like. Synthesizers creep in and things get dark and scary! But it's not to be - Trey jumps in and leads them back towards more positive areas, despite Page's creepy snythesizer still going in the background. A pretty cool 2+ minutes of improv. If it wasn't for what's to come, you'd say it's a shame they aborted this.

>Chalkdust Torture - The song rips from the start, coming oddly out of the dark synths of Blaze On. The song itself is hot but a tad on the sloppy-yet-energetic side of things. But they quickly pull it together and turn in a blazing rendition. Really great moment around 4 minutes when Page and Trey sync up on a descending motif!
--------The jam proper begins right around the 5:30 mark. IMMEDIATELY they drop the bottom out of the song and dive headfirst into a dark, yet serene, kind of area. More gazing at the night sky kind of stuff. Very, very unusual!!!! And into blissful aquatic territory we journey....They stay in this watery pool of bliss for a very long time - finally around the 9:30 mark, some squiggly robo FX creep in. Are those from Trey or Page? Doesn't matter - we are in the most calming, relaxing, surrender-to-the-flow Chalkdust jam I've ever heard. Wow. Talk about your strange calmness!
--------FINALLY, around the 12 minute mark, the jam starts to work it's way out of the Lazy River and a more powerful, rhythmic style begins. Trey doing melodic noodling while the rest of the guys set a groundwork beneath him. Very majestic and uplifting playing at this point. By 15 minutes, the jam is rocketing to the sky, everyone swirling around in a rock and roll frenzy!!!
-------Around 15:45, the rock and roll gives way back to more Type II. Some funkiness creeps in. Page on the electric keys, playing off of Fishman's alternating drum patterns. Trey setting loopers and doing more textural sonic work. This thing is a friggin' guided rocket on a MISSION to...somewhere! Where?! Who knows! But something big is on it's way! At the 16:50 mark Trey jumps on the robo wah and proceeds to honk it up while the rest of the guys quiet down behind him.
-------At 17:30, the whole band lock in tight on this bluesy kind of shuffle out of nowhere and the jam moves into a totally new area!!! The crowd goes nuts and I'm sure they realized something special was in the making. This is freaking SICK!!! The whole jam has this shuffly, bluesy groove to it. Hell yes. Let's dance! The funky shuffle, as I'm calling it, continues again for a very long time. By the 21 minute mark it's starting to get dark again, but very slowly. Trey is playing with the robo wah and some subtle delays, just honking it up while we go ham on the sand, dancing our asses off.
-----Around the 22 minute mark, it seems the jam is taking another major turn. Very slowly, the danceable shuffly starts to be replaced by an atonal, robotic nightmare from Trey. All crazy robot FX and whammy pedal dives. Welcome to outer space, boys and girls!!!! All screaming seagulls and warped synthesizers!!!! ALL HAIL OUR NEW ROBOT OVERLORDS!
---------Finally, around the 26 minute mark, the craziness slowly starts to morph into a slower, more meaningful kind of robot hell. Fishman has none of this though and quickly introduces a rapidfire BOAF-style rhythm to pick it up and keep it from dying. At 26:35, check out Gordo coming in clutch with the bass FX, leading Page and Trey to follow suit! From here, an extremely tense and uneasy feeling emerges, like you are listening to the aural equivalent of a swirling mess of anxiety!!! This is what a panic attack feels like.
-------At the 28 minute mark, the Birds of a Feather rat-a-tat rhythm slows down into a sludgy and soupy kind of ultra-psychedelic "turn on every effect at once" pool of molten whatever. Are you enjoying the soup?!!??!! IS IT TASTY ENOUGH FOR YOU?!?!?! BLUB BLUB BLUB BLUB BLUB!!!! Things are getting heavy!!! Slowly and scarily, this is getting more epic by the second!
-------By 31 minutes, we have descended into Robot Hell. Plain and simple. This is what melting into the sun sounds like. Oh my freaking god. X Factor Magic everywhere. From here, they spend forever in screaming seagull hell. All wailing whammy pedal and heavy guitar riffing. At the 34 minute mark "THE RIFF" makes it's appearance. And from here they just headbang their way through the next portion of the jam. Black Sabbath would be proud!!! This is absolutely terrifying! THIS IS MONSTROUS!!!! THIS IS EVIL!!! PHISH DOESN'T GET MORE EVIL THAN THIS!!!! HOLY MOTHER OF HOLD ME I'M SCARED!!!!
---Finally around the 38 minute mark this starts to subside and the jam fizzles out perfectly into....


END OF PART 1

Set 2, continued

>Beneath a Sea of Stars - Coming out of the pure evil of that Chalkdust's final section, this is literally the perfect song choice to calm us all back down and get us gazing at the sky once more. Absolutely stellar stuff, so beautiful! It's a fine version though really nothing all that special in the long run. The set placement was probably better than the song itself! Still, great as ever, but not really highlight material, imo

Backwards Down the Number Line - See Sea of Stars. It's a very strong version, but nothing you haven't heard before. I understand the likely reason they/Trey decided to play it here, but I'm not certain it was the right song choice. Still, a red hot version worth your time regardless.

>Harry Hood - Great segue right into it! A wonderful version, reaching 15+ minutes. Very, very slowly building into the "you can feel good" bliss section. I guess you've heard a bunch of others like this, but the celebratory nature of this one is just fantastic. Really, really strong Hood!!!

When the Circus Comes to Town - Is Circus. Good stuff.

Character Zero - Is C Zero. Rages hard. Good stuff.


All in all, this show was awesome. I think set 2 kinda meandered to a finale after the Chalkdust, but all of set 1 was terrific. As a whole show, I'll give the nod to 2/22/24, but c'mon, this was like the other side of the same coin. That Chalkdust....