HAB begins with beautiful tone from Barber, and the band plays a sort of spacey dance version of the Star Wars theme for a little bit before abandoning that theme for an uptempo minor key dance jam. What results is a fast-paced trance jam leading into Crickets that has some really nice play from the entire band. It feels like Brownstein tips their hand showing Crickets a little early, but I guess he tends to do that. The jam out of Crickets remains one of my favorites of all-time, so much so that this warrants its own paragraph.

The beginning of this jam as the band leaves Crickets doesn’t really feel like anything special. Barber’s tone is, again, wonderful, and Magner has some neat stuff going on. However, it feels pretty straightforward, and like they might return to Crickets any minute. Then it happens. As the tracking switches to the Little Lai track, Barber crafts an absolutely fantastic riff, and as it turns out this riff is just to bridge the initial section of the jam to the second section. At the 0:20 mark, Barber plays a theme that has gotten caught in my head sporadically over the last decade plus. Each time he plays this four-bar theme, the second half of the theme is just him holding out the last note, which gives Magner a chance to throw out a response on his Rhodes patch. The band is completely locked in here, and they slowly evolve this theme, content to let Barber sit back and show the world why he can dominate, at-will, whenever he feels like it. At the 1:40 mark, Barber changes up the lick a little bit, adding a little tension into things. This little change in the riff is so simple, but does so much to move the jam along. Allen throws in all of the right additions here, and Marc’s bassline, simple-but-effective, rounds out this extremely distinct theme. As the band begins a patient build, Barber starts moving toward higher notes, and at the 3:20 mark, he is soaring over the rest of the band as Brownstein and Magner cleverly drop the Lai peak progression, a subtle change from what they were already playing. Barber’s solo here is so good that I have actually found myself humming the riffs that he creates during this peak solo. It’s catchy, clever, and awesome. Jams like this are the reason people like me have been obsessed with this band for the better part of their adult lives.

The jam back into Crickets from Lai is fine, and after the brilliance that came before it, that’s understandable. Additionally, the return to HAB is about as solid as the first jam of the night. Barber’s tone here is distorted but still really pleasant overall, and he does some sort of space rock-y playing at various parts here which I liked a lot. Boom Shanker to end the set has a forgettable type 1 jam.

First Robots jam is mediocre jamfunk. Do something more interesting here, please. Second jam is a DNB jam, but I actually enjoyed most of this. Brownstein and Allen hit a really solid pocket. There was a portion of this that I thought might be headed to Svenghali, but obviously it did not. Barber’s play here is mostly patient and restrained, which is always a plus in these jams. The jam in Reactor is fantastic. This is pure Blissco along with soaring guitarwork from Barber as the band plows into the middle of Jigsaw Earth. The Jigsaw jam is mediocre and doesn’t do much, and I couldn’t care less about the drum solo. Buddha and Spraypaint both sadly have throwaway jams that effectively hit the ending progression from the start of the jams. Dang. The Shem-Rah jam to end the set is, thankfully, fantastic. The first few minutes are mediocre, but then Magner starts playing a second chord for four bars in the band’s eight-bar motif. Brownstein eventually catches on, and what results is what I believe is the same progression from the famous 04/20/09 Crickets jam. Very poignant movement in this progression, and the whole band is firing on all cylinders once again. The Home Again encore begins with an ambient jam that has some spacey psychedelia from everybody in the band for a full 3 or 4 minutes before the start of Home Again. Marvelous. The jam back into Robots is fine. Great show overall.

Highlights: HAB, Crickets (1**, 2), Robots (2), Reactor**, SRB**, Home Again (Intro**)

January 07, 2007

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