December 11, 2008

The City ~> SotW is top notch. Especially the Story, not for it's length (that's what she said) but for the 3 completely different approaches within' the tune. Beautifully done !

These Holidaze were fantastic minus the 50 foot swells and daily hurricane warnings and the undercover cops.

SRB begins Holidaze with an airy, laid back, four-on-the-floor jam. This eventually develops into a thematic jam with decent communication between all four members. The section around the 11-minute mark features a great piece of thematic jamming, with all four members in perfect sync. Great stuff. There is no jam out of Sven into The City, just kind of an outro. The City has a jam out that begins with a beautiful two-chord progression that is dissimilar to a lot of stuff the band does. Wish they would have carried this out further, but they quickly abandon it. The rest is generic funk. The Story jam is 15 minutes long, and features some fantastic stuff. The first few minutes they clearly are finding their footing, but around the 10-minute mark, they start to get into a thematic, two-chord progression that has a great feel to it. Barber and Brownstein push this initially, but after a couple of minutes, Magner takes over with some great lead work on the Virus. This culminates in a great major key peak. Around the 16-minute mark, they basically reset for the second half of the jam. The second half of this is very cool. It begins as a fairly straightforward dance jam, but Magner’s theme around the 18-minute mark is really unique, and has a distinct sci-fi sound to it. Very cool stuff, though I wish they’d have fleshed this out more. The new songs are both jamless, and the Lai jam to end the show is about as generic as it gets. Meh.

Highlights: SRB*, Story*