I left the country after Bonnaroo, so I just got around to posting these. Enjoy!
phish
Wounded Messenger’s Top 11 Albums and Shows of 2011
It’s the most wonderful list-making time of the year, a time when personal playlists and downloads for the last 12 months are analyzed and rated by any number of entities. That’s what these “best of the year” lists really are – a chance for a particular magazine, website, or blogger to take inventory of the year and make their collective tastes known. You won’t mind if I cheese out and use the year 2011 as an excuse to name 11 albums this year. I also decided to add a list for concerts this year, since I saw so many great ones. The lists are in alphabetical order by band.
The Wounded Messenger’s Top 11 Albums of 2011
The Antlers – Burst Apart
Bon Iver – Bon Iver, Bon Iver
Hayes Carll – KMAG YOYO and Other American Stories
Dawes – Nothing is Wrong
The Flashbulb – Love as a Dark Hallway
Morning Teleportation – Expanding Anyway
The New Mastersounds – Breaks from the Border
The Roots – Undun
Paul Simon – So Beautiful or So What
Wye Oak – Civilian
Yuck – Yuck
The Wounded Messenger’s Top 11 Shows of 2011:
The Budos Band – Hopscotch Festival, The Pour House, Raleigh, NC, Sept. 10, 2011
The Devil Makes Three – Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro, NC, July 24, 2011
The Foreign Exchange – Hopscotch Festival, Lincoln Theater, Raleigh, NC, Sept. 9, 2011
Gov’t Mule – Warren Haynes Christmas Jam, Asheville, NC, Dec. 10, 2011
The Hold Steady – Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro, NC, August 31, 2011
Phil Lesh and Friends – Warren Haynes Christmas Jam, Asheville, NC, Dec. 10, 2011
Phish – Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, Charlotte, NC, June 17, 2011
Robert Plant & Band of Joy – Bonnaroo, Manchester, TN, June 12, 2011
Paul Simon – DAR Hall, Washington, DC, May 25, 2011
Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue – Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro, NC, Nov. 6, 2011
Widespread Panic with Horns and Hornsby – Bonnaroo, Manchester, TN, June 12, 2011
Bonnaroo 2011 Preview and Links Aplenty
In less than 48 hours we’ll be posted up at the 2011 Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, reveling in the tenth anniversary of the event and bringing it all to you via Twitter and Glide Magazine. Right now at Glide there’s a special feature written by Shane Handler and I entitled Ten Years of Bonnaroo: Our Ten Favorite Headlining Sets. Check it out and see which What stage performances from the past 9 festivals stand out above all of the rest.
Follow us on Twitter and you’ll get a constant stream of updates as we encounter the good, the bad, and the just plain strange in Manchester this weekend. If that’s not enough, follow along with us and catch streaming sets from the Comedy Tent at ComedyCentral.com. No word on music webcasts yet, but stay tuned.
Leftover Salmon DVD Review and More
Greetings! Here’s what’s new and upcoming…
My review of Leftover Salmon’s live DVD, Twice in a Blue Moon, is now up at Glide Magazine. Also, my ReviewYou.com page has several new reviews of albums by Asher Quinn, Greg Gibbs, Vandell Andrew, and Kimball.
As spring approaches, we’ve got our eye on a performance of Hair at the formidable Durham Performing Arts Center and music in the form of Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings (3/26) and Jason Isbell (4/19) at the Lincoln Theater in Raleigh.
Looking toward the summer, the Bonnaroo Music Festival will once again serve as the nucleus around which all of my musical plans rotate. Look for a preview or ten here as we stare down the TENTH Bonnaroo and I prepare for my seventh trip to the event. I’ll be tweeting from the festival as well as providing my daily recaps on Glide Magazine, just like last year. I’ll also be attending/tweeting two Phish concerts in North Carolina the weekend after Bonnaroo, and there’s no doubt that many more events will be on the calendar by then. It’s going to be a wild one, stay tuned!
Phish 3D Review at Glide Magazine
We attended the preview screening of the new Phish 3D movie on April 20th. Check out our review at Glide Magazine!
Bonnaroo Adds Comedy; More Festival Updates
Chris Rock was the first ever headlining comedian at Bonnaroo, performing on the What Stage to a crowd that had to be one of the largest in comedy history. This year, comedy fans will have trouble leaving the What Stage at all, as Conan O’Brien will be emceeing the festivities there on Friday and Saturday. O’Brien will also perform at the event’s comedy tent, and his performances there will certainly be the hardest shows of the weekend to gain entry to. For the emcee spots, we envision a wide variety of music and hilarity throughout the day, and we’d imagine there will be plenty of jokes at the expense of the eclectic Bonnaroo audience.
Other comedy acts at Bonnaroo are Doug Benson, Margaret Cho, Aziz Ansari, Jeffrey Ross, Greg Giraldo, Bo Burnham, and more.
The new kid on the block that everyone is watching – Maine’s Nateva Festival – continues to impress with its lineup selections. STS9, George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic, Umphrey’s McGee, Max Creek, John Brown’s Body, The Felice Brothers, Ryan Montbleau Band, Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad, and Greensky Bluegrass were just added.
Some news on those coy ladies Lollapalooza and Mile High – Rumors abound that Phish will play Mile High this year as part of a western tour. Given their recent rounds of footsie with the town of Telluride, where the band is also likely to perform this summer, this seems logical. Lollapalooza remains mostly a mystery, other than the near certainty that The Strokes will be there.
Wounded Messenger’s Best of 2009 Week Begins!
With not only a year but an entire decade of music to celebrate, we’ll be bringing you our “Best of” 2009 lists all week long. We begin with our favorite 10 live shows of the year, followed later this week by our favorite albums of the year and our 101 favorite albums of the decade.
Nothing could be more regionally subjective and personally oriented than naming the ten best live concerts you saw in a given year. But for the sake of my own memory and comparison with other such lists, here are the best 10 shows I saw this year, with free download links and reviews when available.
Salute to DJ Premier & Pete Rock – 12/12/09, Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro, NC (review)
Phish – 12/5/09 John Paul Jones Arena, Charlottesville, VA (dl) (review)
Widespread Panic/Allman Brothers Band – 10/11/09 Raleigh, NC (review)
Nine Inch Nails – 6/13/09 Bonnaroo, Manchester, TN (dl) (review)
Wilco – 6/13/09, Bonnaroo, Manchester, TN (dl) (review)
Okkervil River – 6/14/09 Bonnaroo, Manchester, TN (review)
Eric Bachmann – 7/22/09 Duke Gardens, Durham, NC (review)
Umphrey’s McGee – 2/21/09 The Orange Peel, Asheville, NC (dl) (review)
Janiva Magness – 7/17/09 Blue Bayou Club, Hillsborough, NC (review)
Phish – 3/8/09 Hampton Coliseum, Hampton, VA (dl) (review)
We hope you’ll come back to check out our favorite albums of the decade and the year! Putting together these lists has been a labor of love, and we think they’re a lot of fun. We hope you do too!
Charlottesville Phish Review, Photos, and Videos
My review of the December 5, 2009 Charlottesville Phish show is now up at Glide Magazine, along with some of my wife’s photos and various YouTube videos.
Album Review: Phish – Joy
As maligned as it is, Phish’s studio catalog does one thing really well: it provides brief but telling capsules that mark pivotal moments in the evolution of the band’s music, lives and career. Joy is unlike any other album they’ve released in terms of subject matter, since many of the songs were born of the unsavory circumstance of drug addiction, faltering friendship, and even death. It’s not an album of dreary dope-addled tales, though. It’s one of abandonment, redemption, and hope, by a band that had been declared dead.
Most fans will find Joy similar in sonic quality to 1996’s Billy Breathes, and there’s no harm in that. The two albums share a producer (Steve Lillywhite) and feature a mostly concise, shimmering batch of songs. However, Joy also shares aspects of 2002’s Round Room, in that a great deal of it was recorded in real time, and there are rough patches left in for authenticity. The same divergent calculation can be made with each album – there are shades of the tightly wound rock of Hoist, the drowsy funk-rock of Story of the Ghost, the all-encompassing stylistic structure of Farmhouse, and the calculated prog-rock of Junta. Much like Phish’s entire career, Joy is inspired in equal part by new and old.
Comprised largely of guitarist Trey Anastasio’s compositions, Joy also includes one track each from bassist Mike Gordon and keyboardist Page McConnell. Anastasio, as always, is monstrously evocative and nearly predictable in tackling the subjects we all knew he’d get around to. Gordon and McConnell are less dramatic but equally sophisticated in their contributions. The band casts dark and light atmospheres at will, channeling different eras and aspects of their history throughout the album.
The opening three songs encompass an expansive range of emotions that can be interpreted in highly personal ways. They also exhibit the band’s legendary range. “Backwards Down the Number Line” serves as the shamelessly goofy and emotional pop tune, “Stealing Time From the Faulty Plan” conjures the hazy, menacing rock delirium of Phish circa 1997-2004, and “Joy” provides heaving balladry a la 1999’s “Bug,” with its striking chorus and swaying arena-rock refrain.
Gordon’s “Sugar Shack” chugs along as only his creations can, with fantastically oblique lyrics and fussy, tempramental melodies and time signatures. After this point, the album’s wheels start to rattle a bit, and the flow of the journey gets shakier. “Ocelot,” perhaps the most natural-sounding of the album’s songs in the live setting, comes across as messy and disjointed here. “Kill Devil Falls” is quite the opposite, and its vigorous tempo is on full display, complete with a big sing-along moment at the end that sounds as huge as it should.
The album is lyrically impressive until the feathery “Light,” which contains a real groaner of a line in the second verse – “It takes a few moments of whirling around ’til your feet finally leave the ground.” That line and some of the lyrics in the compositional opus “Time Turns Elastic” are the only real missteps in the lyric department, as most of the songs have deliciously cryptic or jarringly resonant wordplay to compliment the music. Even the deceptive simplicity of McConnell’s flippantly recorded “I Been Around” will stir feelings in Phish fans who know what the band has endured, both personally and professionally, over the last decade.
Still, the album flounders to a close. The placement of “Time Turns Elastic” doesn’t compliment the record as a whole. The 13-minute multi-section song serves as neither opening fanfare, thematic centerpiece nor closing flourish, and the dreamy creation almost feels intrusive in the midst of so many soul-baring, reflective songs. The band goes for gravitas with “Twenty Years Later” in the last spot, but the song’s majestically defiant chorus falls flat in terms of atmosphere and sound quality.
A strong start, plenty of diversity, and an uneven overall experience make Joy similar to other Phish albums. But the triumphant nature of the album’s existence and the unique lyrical content within help turn it into more than just a catalog item. The songs on Joy will always remind those who hear them of the end of a decade and the rebirth of a band.
Rating: 8.4 out of 10
Live Review: Phish – Merriweather Post Pavilion, August 15, 2009
Having recently pressed their collective “reset” button after a half-decade of nonexistence, the guys in Phish have so far used 2009 as – to cop a phrase from the sports world – a “rebuilding year.” The indulgent comeback shows in March served as an enticing prelude to an early summer tour that satisfied but merely hinted at what the band is capable of. Glimpses of the relaxed, confident, daring band that once destroyed America on a yearly basis gradually became visible through the careful murk of predictability that otherwise dominated the shows.
The band’s next-to-last tour stop at Maryland’s idiosyncratic Merriweather Post Pavilion found them in yet another transition. Starting in late July, the late summer tour found Phish reaching deeper and deeper into their catalog and producing gems of varying half life. The Merriweather show proved relatively mild in that department, but thoroughly thought-provoking and entertaining nonetheless.
Phish - Merriweather Post Pavilion, August 15, 2009
The first set provided interesting, if not flawless, sequencing. Many bemoaned the aesthetically unremarkable “Crowd Control” opener, but fans with a nose for profundity sensed significance in the song’s standoffish lyrics. Given the venue’s parking woes, porous perimeter security, and divisive seating arrangements, the sentiment seemed appropriate. In spot number two, the upbeat music and regretful lyrics of “Kill Devil Falls” birthed the night’s first pronounced instrumental excursion, a brief but focused stream of fast-paced fretwork and relentless rhythms.
Rocking Saturday-night crunchers like “Axilla I” and “Stealing Time From the Faulty Plan” were balanced with more reserved offerings, like keyboardist Page McConnell’s “Beauty of A Broken Heart.” This introspective piece proved a bit languid, while the demented musical short-story “Esther” and the diabolically challenging “Foam” – certain sections of which guitarist Trey Anastasio flat-out struggled with – were better received among the devoted throng.
The eye-popping first segment of the show also featured two aggressive songs that hadn’t been performed since July of 2003 – “The Sloth,” a menacing tale of greed and gluttony culled from Anastasio’s decades-old “Gamehendge” song cycle, and the brief near-instrumental “Ha Ha Ha.” Anastasio commented on the fact that, despite botching the intro to the song, drummer Jon Fishman penned “Ha Ha Ha.”
Anastasio then announced the world debut of another Fishman-penned song called “Party Time.” The song’s moniker, which was once rumored to be the title of the next Phish album, served as its only lyrics. The band offered a fun and funky rock groove during this spirited half-joke of a “song.” I can envision “Party Time” emerging from the chaos of “Auld Lang Syne” during a big Phish New Year’s Eve party.
“Strange Design,” while not particularly rare, served as a noteworthy personal moment. I hadn’t witnessed the song live since my first show in the Fall of 1996, and a huge statistical gap was closed by this performance. Roundly satisfied by the set, I wandered out of the pavilion and soaked up the overall atmosphere during the lengthy “Time Turns Elastic” set closer.
“Time Turns Elastic” spans approximately 12 minutes, but features little deviation in structure from performance to performance, so its become as polarizing as any new Phish song among the fanbase. I enjoy “TTE,” but I don’t feel obligated to stand at rapt attention while it uncoils through several unique sections before finally striking with blazing grandeur at its climax.
A seemingly endless array of food and beverage options await the setbreak wanderer at Merriweather, and it wasn’t long before I had one of my favorite beers in hand and good friends all around as I excitedly awaited set two. It was about time for a “Tweezer,” and there’s no better place for it than the start of a second set, with Chris Kuroda’s light show accentuated by the complete absence of sunlight.
Merriweather’s flowing, slow and steady “Tweezer” isn’t going to set a veteran listener’s heart racing by any means. The song’s 10-minute running time is split neatly between the vocal section and the free-form ending, affording the band little time to experiment. Instead, this pleasantly concise weekend warrior of a “Tweezer” hit a moderate peak, quickly grew tired and was replaced by the chiming intro of “Taste.”
Gordon and Fishman - Merriweather Post Pavilion, August 15, 2009
The band has displayed an odd fascination with the “Tweezer” and “Taste” combo this year, offering the same segue at the Hampton shows in March. The gleeful “Taste” easily found the dramatic flourishes and blitzing guitar solo that define it, and Fishman and bassist Mike Gordon happened upon a particularly restless, multifaceted rhythm that nudged Anastasio’s nimble solo further and further into the cosmos.
The night’s most inspired creation was yet to come, though, but there was even a calm before the storm. The band kept the vibe jovial with the jaunty “Alaska” before the horrendously placed ballad “Let Me Lie” brought things to a muggy standstill. This thing is a real groaner and more than enough reason to grab a drink or take a bathroom break. Normally, the Round Room-era boogie “46 Days” that followed wouldn’t be the best way to bust out of a setlist funk, but the band clearly had special treatment in mind for this otherwise ambiguous song.
“46 Days” stayed on a normal course at first, with the accommodating structure giving way to a strutting funk-rock jam. Said jam soon veered off in numerous directions, touching down in foreboding forests of synthesized sounds, entering black holes of ambiance, and scaling majestic improvisational peaks. Mesmerizing atmospheres and pastoral sonic landscapes manifested throughout the band’s deconstruction of sound, which finally, peacefully drifted into the opening strains of The Velvet Underground’s “Oh! Sweet Nuthin’.”
Performed only three times to date and in hibernation since Halloween 1998, “Oh! Sweet Nuthin'” re-surfaced at the Shoreline show 10 days before Merriweather. It seems to be back in the rotation, and I’m for it – it’s a far better choice than “Let Me Lie” or “Anything But Me” if the band just has to play a ballad. It provided a nice moment of measured melancholy before the sly intro of “Harry Hood” materialized from the final chords.
Like every essential Phish song – “Tweezer,” “Tube,” “Run Like an Antelope,” and the like – “Harry Hood” has already seen its pinnacle and will likely never return to the effortlessly glorious quality found in versions from the 1990’s. Still, the band manages to squeeze plenty of moody, cinematic goodness from “Hood”‘s majestically restrained closing jam, and this one soared a bit higher than most recent versions.
Anastasio and Gordon - Merriweather Post Pavilion, August 15, 2009
The second set seemed to fly by, and the encore flew just as fast and with a great deal more volume. Perhaps nodding to the town’s 11 PM cutoff for concerts, the band and crew proceeded to make one hell of a racket around 10:55. Two of the loudest songs in their repertoire – a ballistic version of Led Zeppelin’s “Good Times Bad Times” and the bombastic three-minute juggernaut “Tweezer Reprise” – comprised the show’s finale, and the intent of the song selection was unmistakable, even from my spot in row MM. The encore was probably the loudest I have ever heard the band in an amphitheater setting, so if they wanted to shake the very earth beneath Columbia, MD, I believe they succeeded.
This show – my 59th Phish show – strangely stands as one that I was not ready to see end. It’s not that I’m usually ready for a show to end, but I’m always quite accepting of the fact and well aware of flow of the concert. On this night, I couldn’t believe that “Harry Hood” was really the end, and the encore was all that was left. The setlist was uneven and didn’t please everyone, but Phish shows always please as many people as they leave nonplussed. With so many rare treats and memorable moments, I was incredibly satisfied by the show and I felt that the band was just hitting its stride when the encore rolled around. As jaded as Phish’s longtime fans are, it’s becoming apparent in 2009 that Phish’s extended absence will definitely serve to make out hearts – and ears – grow fonder.
All Photos by Esther Rodgers
08/15/09 Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia, MD
Set 1: Crowd Control, Kill Devil Falls, The Sloth, Beauty Of A Broken Heart, Axilla I, Foam, Esther, Ha Ha Ha, Party Time, Tube, Stealing Time From The Faulty Plan, Strange Design, Time Turns Elastic
Set 2: Tweezer > Taste, Alaska, Let Me Lie, 46 Days, Oh! Sweet Nuthin’, Harry Hood
Encore: Good Times Bad Times, Tweezer Reprise
The Wounded Messenger 