October 30, 2007

One of the most underrated shows of '07. It spit fires in both sets, sounds great. The second had some delicious dub jamming as well as unreal oboe patches (or "hautbois" for my fellow frenchmen) and the like from Mr. Mags throughout the night. The Wallingford geek 'n freak was indeed in between some INCREDIBLE shows but don't discount this New Haven buttercup. It's phentastik. show: (8.6862 / 10)

Be Well and ring that Bell! {{{ Expect nothing, appreciate everything }}}

Much Love to all and to Willow, Sage, Harmony, Skye and Blossom. What ever happened to Peter, Paul, Mike & Mary :)

Mitts to start the show is standard. The jam in Humu is fantastic. This is straight-up Blissco, and there are so many great moments in this jam. There are parts of this that feel like they could launch into Naeba years before its debut. Barber’s tone and note choice here are sublime, and the same goes for Magner. Almost all of the Mr. Don jam is forgettable until they switch to minor key late in the jam. This happens with about 5 minutes remaining in the Don track. The rest of this is solid. The first few minutes of the SRB jam are great. Magner has these haunting, eerie leads, and the overall vibe here is great. However, they eventually shift for this major key theme that is a little too jambandy for me. Wish they would have seen through the minor key theme.

Mulberry’s has the usual two token jams that just don’t do much at all. The Rock Candy jam has a nice little progression from Marc right out of the gate, and Barber’s play is fairly restrained. At 4:50 Allen drops the e-kick, and the resulting jam is dancy and fantastic. This is fairly simplistic in terms of the progression and the melodic play, but I thoroughly enjoyed this and all the little variations on the theme that the band does here. At one point Barber switches on to MIDI keyboard and I even enjoyed parts of this, although it’s painfully obvious that keyboard is not his forte. At the 15-minute mark, the band drops half-time into a dub jam that has some great psychedelic leads from Magner, and some atmospheric dub from Barber, Brownstein, and Allen. Magner switches over to pan flute, and Allen eventually drops the four-on-the-floor beat, now accompanied by the dub backing and the pan flute. This is very, very cool. The Orch jam begins with this weird descending melody that Magner plays. This is neat, but they don’t really elaborate on this much. Barber switches on to MIDI keyboard here and immediately goes to one of the arp presets that he leaned on so heavily when he used the keyboard on this tour. He mostly used Sylenth, and these presets stick out like a sore thumb to me. This jam had a lot of potential, but they just never quite get there. Trucker’s winds up with a jambandy jam that just does nothing for me. Munchkin just goes no place interesting. This is just a lot of water-treading until they hit the ending theme. Memphis first jam immediately becomes a hip-hop jam, which is totally fine with me. This gets digital and interesting, led by Allen and Magner, with a heavy dose of Barber as they near the end of the jam. The second jam out of Memphis is basically just the ending of 7-11 from the first note of the jam. Eh.

Highlights: Humu**, Don, Rock Candy**, Memphis (1*)