August 18, 2007

There’s a short, straightforward SITA jam. The main Astronaut jam has a good amount of filler, but there are a few portions of this that I quite enjoyed, and it at least kept my attention throughout. The Munchkin jam has a lot of potential, but I feel like they never quite get to the next level. The Story jam gets dark and dissonant, and this turns into an awesome, angry, dark jam. Really neat stuff.

The jam out of Caterpillar has some really excellent parts. This begins with a pretty straightforward Caterpillar jam, but they speed up after a few minutes, and Allen is not shy with adding e-drums to the mix here. Brownstein’s plodding bassline pushes faster and faster until the band is at Cyclone tempo, and they just vamp here for a while. This is not bad by any means, and they craft a nice build prior to the Cyclone drop. The jam out of Cyclone features what sounds to me like a Bazaar Escape tease from Marc. It’s always hard to “call” this because the Bazaar Escape chord progression is not all that complex. However, this sounds deliberate to me, and they jump out of it shortly after starting, which is consistent with teases. In any event, this whole jam is mostly solid. Near the end of the Cyclone track, they drop into a dub jam featuring Magner on the pan flute patch. This has kind of a Middle Eastern vibe to it, and at one point Allen drops the kick to turn this back into an uptempo dance jam for the return to Caterpillar. However, frustratingly Brownstein is back to not being consistent on the Caterpillar peak riff. Here he drops the G > Eb for part of it, then the verse riff for the rest. The Pilin jam has a lot of potential. Johnny Rabb is obviously an incredibly talented drummer, and he gels well with the band. However, this ultimately falls flat. The first portion of the jam is extremely monotonous and while they develop an uplifting peak that is well-crafted, at that point I was already bored. Papercut is a song that I enjoy a lot. However, I'm not sure that they have ever, even on this first time they've played it, gotten the overly composed section correct. This sounds very awkward and like Barbers misses most of the notes. The resulting jam out of Papercut, is generally quite good. The first few minutes it's clear that they're struggling to find their footing, but they eventually turn uptempo into a dance jam. This builds into a blissful peak before the band drops into Sound One. Very, very good. Closing your set at your own festival with I Wanna Be Sedated makes no sense to me. I get playing it for the pre-party a day before the festival begins, but in classic Biscuits fashion, they beat it to death. At least in this instance they jam out, even though the jam is somewhat boring and forgettable. Buddha itself has a decent jam, which is marginally better. However, this too is ultimately forgettable for a somewhat disappointing end to the festival.

Highlights: Astronaut (2), Story**, Caterpillar, Cyclone, Papercut*