Skipping around because I've got a good driving job today and the mood is striking, so I'm holding off my replay of the last two nights of Mexico 2026 for a few days.
Jumping into night 1 of Sphere 2026!
4/16/26 Las Vegas
Set 1
Show one of nine at this year's run begins with Evolve. An interesting but nice choice of opener to ease us into the show. Evolve Is typically excellent with great soloing from Trey in high energy off the bat, But at the end of the day it's nothing you'll remember in an hour's time.
Immediately, they follow with a BANG, with the first highlight of the run. A 15 minute nuclear friggin bomb Wolfman. This version is just magically exceptional. It's another typical first set fire bomb rager version, but holy moly sweet Mary in heaven they take it to the hundredth degree with this one!!!! From the rip everybody is locked in extra tight, vibing and reacting to each other with aplomb. The jam builds and builds to the fiery volcanic peak and when it hits, Oh my freaking God does it EXPLODE!! AND IT DOESN'T END!! IT GOES FOR LIKE FIVE FREAKING MINUTES!! IT JUST GOES AND GOES AND GOES AND GOES AND GOES AND GOES AND GOES AND GOES AND GOES AND GOES AND GOES AND GOES!! It's like a Catholic mass - it's STILL goin on!! Definitely bring your fire hose and your buckets of water because you will have 12th degree fatal burns from this one. Talk about smashing down the door!!!
Following that we get an interesting choice with a much welcome rare Foam. Unfortunately, this is where the set takes an unexpected turn downwards. Foam is GOOD. Not the tight readings of recent years, everyone hits their notes but its very "hesitant sounding". It has an air of "we've got this but bear with us here, guys" about it. At least they played a solid version.
Theme is unspectacular tonight. Like Foam, its a fine version that is just kinda lukewarm on the whole. Trey's soloing at the end is janky but has a little nice peak. This is an AVERAGE Theme on all fronts.
Rift is up next and continues the downward slide. Its another OK version. Certainly not a butcher job or anything, but Trey is doing that 2019 style "picking too quietly" thing to the songs detriment. Even worse, he straight up gives up on the shreddy peak bit, lol.
THANKFULLY, things pick back up in a major way with a rare 14 minute first set Scents!!!! And boy is it awesome!!! The song itself is still kinda lukewarm, but this jam is just gnarly!!! Definite X Factor striking in a big way, The jam begins in a heavy and dark zone rocking hard for a few minutes. Soon it somehow shifts downwards and morphs into a ridiculous psychedelic meltdown similar to the famous Camden 2004 Scents. It becomes this massive cloud of evil darkness just descending upon Sphere. This is what nightmares and panic attacks are made of!!! This goes on for a very very long time and it's absolutely incredible!!! This gym is like a slow dissension into the bowels of hell. Just pure hazy darkness in the best possible way. If you like your Phish abstract and screw the F up this is the jam for you!!! THIS IS FREAKING AMAZING YOU HAVE TO GET THIS OH MY GOD WHAT'S GOING ON.
Keeping in mind that this is a pre-structured set, the jam magically dissolves PERFECTLY and slowly into Steam! Holy moly talk about perfect set construction, that was the perfect resolution to that jam. There isnt much to say - Steam came, Steam saw, and Steam firebombed the world . Must hear. So perfect as paired with Scents.
The set closes expectedly with a 15 minute Melt. As with Steam, in a good way, there isn't much to say. This one just goes for it hard and fast dissolving quickly into the expected cloud of screwed up darkness. Very bleep bloop until about halfway through when Fishman subverts the norm and reintroduces a drum beat. Gordo locks in and The swirling cloud of noise gets a rocking backdrop. They rock it hard for a few minutes just swirling down the vortex into hell before coming back to Earth and leading us out of the set. I wouldn't call this an all-timer or anything but it's definitely must here and delivers the goods as you would hope!
All in all, set one was 2/3 a resounding success! They came out ready to fight with high energy and great inter band tightness. Aside from that strange half an hour or so in the middle of the set where things went lopsided, the start and the end where as impressive as we could hope.
Wolfman, Scents>Steam and Melt are all must hear, all day. Fantastic. ESPECIALLY that Scents!!!!
Set 2
The second half of the show opens on a less anxiety inducing ground with a 17 minute Everythings Right. Its a really awesome version too. It quickly deviates, the type 1 jamming taking on a cool, darker kind of "late night" vibe. Great, patient soloing throughout. Not much to say, its just REALLY good. At 13 minutes it finally shifts into the upbeat blissey rocking we thought we were going to be bombarded with from the start. Rages to a close and leaves you very satisfied if not blown away.
They follow quickly with an 18 minute Disease. Unfortunately its NOT a highlight.
The song sounds really good. Tight and energetic but not particularly hot either. The jamming is mostly a meandering mess - Fishman is completely stuck doing his boring rat a tat cymbal torture and the jam just goes nowhere. Definitely a lack of inspiration. The jam DOES finally lock in and deliver a killer peak finale for a few minutes but its too little too late . This is one of those versions where you start checking out halfway through and begin to think "is this over yet?"
This Disease isnt BAD, but its also entirely skippable. Bummer.
Nice choice of 20 Years Later up next. Its nothing particularly mindblowing but it is a strong type 1 reading with terrific soloing from Trey. Its not a patch on the hellish Mexico 2025 reading, but it definitely delivers enough. Not essential but good nonetheless.
This set quickly sinking into mediocrity, we then get a typical type 1 Jibboo. Thankfully its actually a really terrific reading that is just bursting with energy. It's good enough for me to call it must hear even though it's a type 1 version like you've heard a million times before. However, Things are looking bad if we are this far into a second set and this is maybe the highlight so far.
Yikes!
And now Lifeboy to derail this already struggling affair. Of course I love this song and it's wonderful to always get it but man talk about bad policeman for a set this average. Thankfully its great but again nothing must hear.
This MID AS ALL HELL 2nd set comes to a close with the fiery, partytastic combo of YEM>2001. YEM is expertly performed and features an excellent couple minutes of post-vocal jam playing. That in turn morphs into a massive 12 minute 2001. 2001 is what you expect. Great stuff.
Im undecided whether to call this combo must hear but its definitely a show highlight.
Terrific encore of an a capella Space Oddity (SKIP!) into a modern all timer Harry Hood. Hood IS absolutely must hear tonight. This one has some definite X Factor on it. It's about 15 minutes long and just goes on forever in the greatest way possible. You know how sometimes they skip to the end way too quickly? Well this one you get to a point where you're wondering if the end is ever going to come! If this one doesn't send chills down your spine I don't know what it will take for a modern version to do so. This one is phenomenal. What a way to end the show!
All in all, I'd call night one a success. But a deeply flawed one. What is going on with the second set?! It's like they're just spinning their wheels, delivering "eh, good enough I guess" versions That you can't call poor but you also can't say anything good about really for the most part.
The opening ER and the Hood are the TRUE essential pieces, but shoutouts to the YEM>2001 and the Jibboo
The Hood was the only piece of music in this set that I thought even approached the heights of the best of set one.
I'm going to rate set one a strong B+ and set 2 a B- . The inconsistency of this show was just wild and made it a chore to get through by the end, honestly. That's really disappointing because it's actually a great show but it's just its own worst enemy and can't get out of its own way or something.
Im giving it a strong 3.7
The second half of the show opens on a less anxiety inducing ground with a 17 minute Everythings Right. Its a really awesome version too. It quickly deviates, the type 1 jamming taking on a cool, darker kind of "late night" vibe. Great, patient soloing throughout. Not much to say, its just REALLY good. At 13 minutes it finally shifts into the upbeat blissey rocking we thought we were going to be bombarded with from the start. Rages to a close and leaves you very satisfied if not blown away.
They follow quickly with an 18 minute Disease. Unfortunately its NOT a highlight.
The song sounds really good. Tight and energetic but not particularly hot either. The jamming is mostly a meandering mess - Fishman is completely stuck doing his boring rat a tat cymbal torture and the jam just goes nowhere. Definitely a lack of inspiration. The jam DOES finally lock in and deliver a killer peak finale for a few minutes but its too little too late . This is one of those versions where you start checking out halfway through and begin to think "is this over yet?"This Disease isnt BAD, but its also entirely skippable. Bummer.
Nice choice of 20 Years Later up next. Its nothing particularly mindblowing but it is a strong type 1 reading with terrific soloing from Trey. Its not a patch on the hellish Mexico 2025 reading, but it definitely delivers enough. Not essential but good nonetheless.
This set quickly sinking into mediocrity, we then get a typical type 1 Jibboo. Thankfully its actually a really terrific reading that is just bursting with energy. It's good enough for me to call it must hear even though it's a type 1 version like you've heard a million times before. However, Things are looking bad if we are this far into a second set and this is maybe the highlight so far.
Yikes!
And now Lifeboy to derail this already struggling affair. Of course I love this song and it's wonderful to always get it but man talk about bad policeman for a set this average. Thankfully its great but again nothing must hear.
This MID AS ALL HELL 2nd set comes to a close with the fiery, partytastic combo of YEM>2001. YEM is expertly performed and features an excellent couple minutes of post-vocal jam playing. That in turn morphs into a massive 12 minute 2001. 2001 is what you expect. Great stuff.
Im undecided whether to call this combo must hear but its definitely a show highlight.
Terrific encore of an a capella Space Oddity (SKIP!) into a modern all timer Harry Hood. Hood IS absolutely must hear tonight. This one has some definite X Factor on it. It's about 15 minutes long and just goes on forever in the greatest way possible. You know how sometimes they skip to the end way too quickly? Well this one you get to a point where you're wondering if the end is ever going to come! If this one doesn't send chills down your spine I don't know what it will take for a modern version to do so. This one is phenomenal. What a way to end the show!
All in all, I'd call night one a success. But a deeply flawed one. What is going on with the second set?! It's like they're just spinning their wheels, delivering "eh, good enough I guess" versions That you can't call poor but you also can't say anything good about really for the most part.
The opening ER and the Hood are the TRUE essential pieces, but shoutouts to the YEM>2001 and the Jibboo
The Hood was the only piece of music in this set that I thought even approached the heights of the best of set one.
I'm going to rate set one a strong B+ and set 2 a B- . The inconsistency of this show was just wild and made it a chore to get through by the end, honestly. That's really disappointing because it's actually a great show but it's just its own worst enemy and can't get out of its own way or something.
Im giving it a strong 3.7
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