July 22, 2007

Blissco. That 1st set is monstrous. Dance-heavy show with funk for days. On your way to a show? 20 minutes from the lots? Pumped and lots of adrenaline circulating? Turn this on. It's the perfect ignition switch for that liquid.

1st: [8.94256 / 10] 2nd: [7.7598 / 10]

Caterpillar comes out with some focused jamming from the band, particularly Barber who seems engaged and interested in communicating with Magner. This turns into a very solid dance jam, complete with e-kick and thirst quenchers. The drop into I-Man is awkward, and sort of comes out of nowhere despite them vamping toward I-Man for several minutes. Weird. In I-Man, they play a totally different progression and melody, and Barber just sings over it. Very weird version. The jam out of I-Man has a Blissco-y vibe to it, and this has a very 1.0 feel to it to me. Barber in particular has some great phrasing. The Confrontation “jam” (or tease) is unique and weird, but I’ll count this overall as a single jam out of I-Man. Spacebird is also a very weird version. This has like a middle jam? Okay…? It goes nowhere, and seems a waste of time, but good on them for trying something a little different. The second Spacebird jam is similarly, a waste of time. The Morph jam features Steve Molitz (ugh) and Trevor from Tea Leaf Green. This is “jamtronica” funk that seems to take forever. Good lord.

TVM 1st jam is about as straightforward as they can get with this jam. Second jam begins with the usual The Very Funk, but eventually stretches into a dance jam. The last 3 minutes, Magner has this really neat patch that he uses to craft this happy-go-lucky melody, and these few minutes are better than the prior 20 minutes of jams combined. If they would have gone to this right out of The Very Funk instead of treading water, this could have been fantastic. Instead it feels like a bit of a missed opportunity. There’s a 2-minute long jam out of Listening to You before the Basis drop. Meh. There’s no jam out of Basis (why?) and no jam out of Gangster (why?), which leads us to Home Again. Not sure the point of this medley, but pretty frustrating as a listener. Fortunately, the jam out of Home Again turns into a very solid, uptempo dance jam. This is nothing too far outside the box, but is generally well-played by the entire band. Abraxas jam is similarly solid. The encore is bizarrely long. A jammed out Fiddler featuring a bluesy jam (meh), and a Spaga > Caterpillar. That’s a juicy encore on paper. However, the reality is pretty mundane. None of this really does much for me, ending a mediocre show.

Highlights: Caterpillar*, I-Man*, Home Again, Abraxas