April 23, 2006

Crystal Ball and Sweating Bullets are both standard to open the show. Spacebird goes nowhere, SJSS is jamless, and Plan B has a short type 1 jam. It’s surprising that this first set is so boring, considering every time Brownstein banters he sounds like he’s heavily under the influence of something.

First Jigsaw jam is pretty short and is very clearly kept within the confines of Jigsaw the entire time. The second Jigsaw jam turns into this happy Blissco theme that I enjoyed quite a bit. This is the first time this entire show that I heard something I wanted to listen to again. Between the three jams in Liquid Handcuffs, back in Jigsaw, and Morph, this is nearly 30 minutes of just totally mediocre playing. Don is next, and they seem to have just flipped a switch at this point. They craft a nice little Blissco theme here, which later turns darker and much dancier. This is an awesome, driving theme. The jam out of Cyclone is more of the same. Head down, straightahead trance jamming. Very solid pocket here from Brownstein. This HAB jam is...interesting. This honestly sounds like it’s a String Cheese Incident jam. I don’t know that this is necessarily a bad thing here. This is Blissco all day, and it’s fun to hear Barber engaged in this way. They do a small “ending” “jam” here, featuring Magner with a moronic tease of the Itsy Bitsy Spider. Yeah, really. The first few minutes of the Helix encore are pretty straightforward and not all that interesting. However, around 9:30, the band develops a dark, evil theme that is punctuated by the almost tribal sounding drums from Allen. The rest of this jam has some very dissonant stuff and most of this scratches an itch for me, big time. Around the 14-minute mark they have this dancy middle-eastern theme going which is really cool. Barber has a big “Dixieland” tease. I get why he’s doing it, but feels gross anyway.

Highlights: Jigsaw (2), Don, Cyclone, HAB**, Helix*