January 21, 2009

This version of Meditation features the first ever jam out, as the band melts into the intro to TVM. This is pretty good, which is more than I can say for either of the jams in TVM. The first is as type 1 as it gets. The second has 2-3 minutes of decent dance jamming before turning into a long Orch theme intro jam. The Orch Theme jam begins a little aimlessly, but this develops into an awesome, digital, duntzgeon jam. This is all about Brownstein and Allen just acting as a malevolent, driving force while Magner and Barber mess around in the upper registers with textural little things here and there. Barber is a little directionless at times, but overall, I absolutely loved this. The 42 jam does virtually nothing for me. Magner jumps on the square wave lead at the very beginning, which is typically a sign of good things to come. However, in this case, it’s mostly monotonous, and Barber’s play, while not directionless, is frankly just uninteresting.

Run Like Hell to begin the second set has a 5+ minute jam to begin. The first few minutes of this are decent, as the band crafts a vampy jam, featuring Brownstein on MIDI keyboard. Unfortunately, basically the moment the Brownstein switches back to bass, this gets far less interesting. The remaining two minutes or so in the jam are almost entirely forgettable, with the band eventually dropping into the song around the 6-minute mark. This is a someone unusual version of RLH for this era of the band. First of all, it is a standalone version, a relative rarity in 2009 – they only did it one other time. What’s equally interesting is that they often use this as a jam vehicle with multiple jams, one between every verse, etc. In this case, other than the intro jam there is only the main jam which leads to the ending. The other aspect here that’s a little interesting is that as they near the end of the jam the band speeds up dramatically. This almost felt like they were going to be headed towards a Basis ending or something along those lines, but instead they awkwardly drop back into the ending and are forced to drop 20 BPM in a moment. Weird. As for the jam itself, not a lot interesting going on here. Allen has a bunch of beat repeat effects in play, and Brownstein is again on the MIDI keyboard. However, the themes generally are not great. First Robots jam begins fairly predictably. For a few minutes, the band vamps, without a whole lot going on. Around the 8:30 mark, Brownstein switches to MIDI keyboard, and the band develops a multi-chord theme with some really cool spacey stuff from Magner on the top end. The next 90 seconds or so are very cool, unfortunately, they don’t last nearly long enough. After initially sounding like they were returning to Robots, the band instead pushes on, continuing the jam. This is a new theme entirely, and for a couple minutes it feels like the band is trying to figure out what they want to do. It becomes apparent why, around the 13-minute mark, when do the band shifts into 3/4 time. I’m not sure what it was that was pushing the band to try these things in early 2009. They didn’t do much jamming in other time signatures for basically the entirety of 2008, and yet within the first handful of shows in 2009, here they are experimenting with the time signatures. Eventually they shift to a darker, dancier sound and it becomes clear the reason for the shift is House Dog ending. Neat. Astronaut is jammed out of the SITA section. The first 2-3 minutes or so of this jam are a standard type 1 jam, and then at the 7-minute mark or so the band breaks free into type 2 territory. Ultimately, nothing all that interesting going on here beyond jamming out of the SITA section. They wind up in a bit of a repeater jam around the 11-minute mark, and this just generally is not appealing to me at all. The first several minutes of the Vasilios jam are similarly forgettable. They do this start/stop jamming halfway through this jam that I really could not care less about. The last few minutes of this jam are fairly solid, with Allen dropping a heavy e-kick drum, and Magner utilizing the Strobelights and Martinis patch. Allen throws in some additional e-drums, and while this isn’t incredible, it was enough to redeem the jam for me. They then return to the ending of Astronaut, despite never having played the middle SITA section. I suspect this was unintentional, as the band falters a little bit as they initially try to drop into Astronaut ending. I’d be curious to find out if this was planned, or if they simply forgot they hadn’t sung the Suspended in the Air lyrics yet. The Rock Candy encore is solid. This is mostly a dark dance jam, with Allen using the heavy e-kick drum. There is a duntzgeon feel for part of the jam, and while generally this was mostly inside the box, still enjoyed it.

Highlights: Meditation, Orch (1**), RLH (Intro), Robots (1*), Vassillios, Rock Candy*