June 24, 2006

The Caterpillar jam mostly feels like treading water until they shore up the segue into the ending of Sweating Bullets. On the other hand, the jam out of Bullets back into Caterpillar is pretty neat. This is plotting, brooding dark jamming. I like it a lot. Brownstein still hasn’t implemented the I-VI progression for the ending, which is sad. It seems so obvious in retrospect. Handcuffs is boring DNB. Buddha does nothing for me here.

There’s no jam out of Rock Candy, it just goes straight into Abraxas. Meh. The jam out of Abraxas back into Rock Candy is very dark, but they basically just riff on the Rock Candy progression. This is effectively a long type 1 jam. Not for me. The first Crickets jam has an interesting multi-chord jam in it. This almost sounds like a planned progression. I enjoyed this enough to mark it as a highlight, though it’s doubtful I’d ever re-listen to this. Basis has just a drop back into Crickets (no jam). The jam out of Crickets is mostly forgettable. However, as they get closer to Helix, Barber has a great riff that he uses a bunch of tremolo on, and it sounds awesome. Highlight for me, just for this short little section of the jam. Helix feels at points like they might be headed for an inverted Abyss, though obviously that doesn’t happen. No part of the Step Inside jam does anything for me.

Highlights: Bullets, Crickets (1, 2)