November 08, 2006

The Home Again opener actually gets extended a decent amount here. The jam itself gets darker than the usual mostly-major-key jams this song generates, and while this isn’t outstanding, I think this is a highlight simply for the unique nature of this jam. The Shimmy jam is largely straightforward, with the band jamming in Phrygian to no real destination. The most interesting part of this is around the 13:30 mark where the band drops the Phrygian mode and plays in a straight minor key. They then embark on what sounds a LOT like an inverted Abyss is coming. This settles into Vassillios in a pretty interesting way. The jam out of Vassilios is a repetitive breakbeat jam that just does zero for me. The Abraxas jam is slightly better. There’s a portion where it sounds like Brownstein is playing the “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It” bassline, which has an undeniably catchy groove, but ultimately this jam never developed enough for my tastes. Plan B has a decent type 1 jam, but this is pretty paint-by-numbers.

Spectacle begins the second set with a very pretty intro jam. This only lasts a couple minutes, or it’d be a highlight here. Bullets is jamless. The first Robots jam flows into the beginning of Boom Shanker nicely, though the jam itself is too short to be memorable. I’d say the same is true for the jam back into Robots. Second Robots jam is pretty good. This isn’t anything outside the box as far as second Robots jams go, but solid. Mitts and Camera B are jamless to close the set. The banter pre-encore is pretty great. Barber just petitions the crowd for which song they want to hear, and lists off a bunch of songs. The Waves encore is apparently the first ever standalone Waves encore, which seems surprising, but okay. Jam here is pretty solid dark trance with some nice phrasing from Barber throughout.

Highlights: Home Again, Robots (2), Waves