November 02, 2006

Sound quality on the Whip It and 7-11 tracks are awful. First 7-11 jam never strays far from type 1 territory, and not in an interesting way. The jam is very repetitive for a significant portion of it. However, around the 17-minute mark, the band ventures into some Blissco territory, and this scratches a major itch for me, particularly Barber’s play. Sadly, this is ditched way too quickly, as the band had some really interesting stuff for a minute or two. The jam in Ladies has a really great melody from (I think?) Buckets. They develop a fantastic theme around this. I actually really enjoy this jam, and it’s mostly because of Buckets. How rare is that? The I-Man jam feels rehearsed, as the entire band hits the same chord progression at the same time. This is very pretty, even if it’s not all that amazing. The ending I-Man jam is a much “rockier” jam. This is fine, but doesn’t move the needle for me much.

The Spacebird jam to start the second set is not awful, and they at least get outside the usual 6/4 > 4/4 structure. Magner sounds like he might be going toward something really cool near the end of this, but they just head back to the Spacebird ending. Mindless first jam is actually very cool. Buckets adds some neat texture here, even if there are parts that feel like they go on a bit too long. The second Dribble is dance party central right from the start. There’s not much outside the box going on here, but most of this was enjoyable – particularly given that there was 16 minutes or so of straight improv. Around the 30-minute mark, they drop down to a much spacier sound, only to build back into a nice dance groove. Again, not reinventing the wheel here, but cool nonetheless. The Shem-Rah jam does nothing for me, though I actually really enjoyed Barber’s solo in the “man of the hour” section. Morph encore is basically the same Morph encore you’ve heard a thousand times.

Highlights: Ladies**, I-Man (1*), Dribble (1, 2)