January 04, 2007

First Magellan jam doesn’t do much for me, although Magellan being the first song played on the band’s first cruise is a neat touch. Second jam leaves the Magellan middle for the “bells” portion of Above the Waves. This is very cool. The jam out of Waves is extremely fast trance, then extremely fast DNB. Other than being fast, this is pretty monotonous, and falls victim to the mediocrity that the Biscuits DNB often produces. There’s no jam into Paul Revere, and the song itself is terrible (at least when performed by the Biscuits). The band plays a very brief intro jam into Sven, though I won’t really count this as it’s really more of a vamp into the opening composition. Sven on the other hand turns into a full-blown dance jam into Confrontation ending. This is pretty safe play, but I found myself bobbing my head along to Brownstein’s bassline. The jam out of Confrontation back into Magellan is decent, nothing more. The little Stir It Up jam is always appreciated. KOTW is jamless.

Echoes unfortunately turns into a pretty straightforward dance jam. I thought it was interesting how they used Echoes in 2006 as fodder for ambient jamming and would have loved to see that continue, though I understand why on a jam cruise they did not do so. There’s a short intro jam prior to Abyss that is straightforward and predictable. Both Abyss and Cyclone have solid, if predictable, dance jams. The B&C to close the show also turns into a dance jam that gets dark and dissonant. Solid ending to the show.

Highlights: Magellan (2), Sven (2), Abyss, Cyclone, B&C