There’s some great banter at the beginning of the show. Barber explains, “It’s better to look good than to feel good, but sometimes you just get both of them at the same time.” They have a one minute long, spacey ambient intro to the show before they hit the opening notes of Buddha. The Buddha jam is a pretty standard dance jam. Not a lot here to sink your teeth into. Spectacle has a short, 2-3 minute intro jam. The jam out of Spectacle begins with kind of a midtempo dance jam, and for the most part the early section of this jam is filler. However, the section following the 14-minute mark in Spectacle gets into some neat stuff, with some catchy basslines from Brownstein and plucky, bouncy synths from Magner bouncing off the walls to counterbalance the lush “string” synths in the foreground. Near the end of the Spectacle track, Brownstein switches to MIDI keyboard and the band crafts a much more digital sound as they transition to Lunar Pursuit. This section is very cool and features some great stuff from everybody in the band. The jam out of Lunar Pursuit begins with Magner playing a lead riff that he develops after only a few bars. This is a neat, odyssean riff, and it doesn’t take long for the rest of the band to follow him. Eventually, Barber starts playing a harmony to this melody, and while I thought this was very cool, I sure wish they would’ve developed this more than they did. Instead, they sort of just play through this theme several times, then drop tempo by 10-15 BPM in order to begin the transition to 42. The remainder of this jam features Brownstein on MIDI keyboard, and is a pretty run-of-the-mill dance jam for the band to segue into 42. The 42 jam is decent. This features a lot of elements that I like, including lots of e-drums from Allen and arpeggiated patch work from Magner. Brownstein also utilizes the MIDI keyboard yet again here, although it feels like the band is a little directionless at times. This felt like it could’ve been much cooler than it was, but ultimately it’s still a highlight for me.

Hot Air Balloon has a fantastic jam, though this is basically all Barber. Brownstein and Magner are mostly limited in this jam to playing a vaguely North American Scum sounding theme. Meanwhile, Barber soars through different guitar riffs, and just generally rocks out for the majority of this jam. I felt like Allen was almost too laid-back here, and would’ve loved to see him take a little bit more charge in the later parts of this jam. That said, I’ve always really enjoyed this jam, and I will never forget watching Barber in awe as he rocked out on stage. The jam in Helicopters is okay. I wanted to like this so badly, but ultimately it felt like a lot of filler. Barber is sort of all over the place in this jam, and the band can’t seem to decide on what theme they’re going to stick with. There’s an interesting airy, breezy section just before they drop into Pygmy Twylyte. This was really cool but lasted all of 30 seconds. The jam out of Pygmy feels like it will be another filler jam for the first few minutes. However, when they hit a dance groove near the last minute or two of the track, this gets markedly more interesting. The band crafts a reasonably interesting theme, and it’s capped by an absolutely fantastic peak. Barber destroys this, and the band plays a longer than usual flight section of HAB. The first Robots jam features Magner on the Virus. For the most part, I felt like a lot of this was filler once again, although interestingly it sounds like Magner is teasing On Time nearly a year before its debut. It’s possible this is simply a coincidence, but felt deliberate. The Home Again jam, again, feels a little bit like filler. Brownstein shifts onto the MIDI keyboard for a bit, and they sort of have a call-and-response thing going on for a bit. This never really felt like they got to anything interesting, although at least they were communicating very well. The second Robots jam is the rare DNB jam that I absolutely love. This begins at the 2:20 mark, and it’s clear from the very beginning that Magner and Marc are locked in. Brownstein starts the band off right with a simple but effective progression, and Magner is initially playing a sixteenth-note melody that is sort of just filling up space initially. Barber comes in with the gated guitar effect, and he’s also mostly taking space as well at this point as the band develops a foundation. At the 3:40 mark, Magner modifies his melody a bit, finding his footing as he extends certain notes. By 3:55, he has the seed of what ultimately becomes the lead melody for this jam, and at 4:36 he switches to a different synth lead tone. Allen has a great little build-up at 4:50, providing a bit of a break in the DNB, which I think is a recurring problem the band has in these jams – there’s just too much of the same for too long. Here, that problem does not exist. The next 60 seconds or so have Magner going elsewhere, and for a moment it feels like that great synth lead he came up with earlier will be abandoned altogether. However, at the 6:04 mark, he comes back with this lead with a vengeance, and his melodic changes hit the chord changes from Marc absolutely perfectly. This feels like a piece that would find itself at home in Morrowind or Skyrim (albeit an electronic version). This is so awesome, so unique, and so cool from everybody. Allen even throws in another couple of build-ups and drum changes, and at 7:16, Allen drops the beat to half-time. This simple switch provides it with a truly epic feel, and at this point Barber comes in as a harmonic counterpoint to Magner’s lead. This is truly, truly, truly awesome. The banter pre-encore is all about how Allen is picking the encore each night on the encore, then refers to him as “Allen My-Real-Name-Is-Anthony Aucoin.” The Lai encore is not amazing, but it is an overall solid Lai jam with some decent stuff from Magner and solid interplay between he and Barber. This coalesces into a fantastic Lai peak to end the show. I wish Brownstein would have held off a bit on the Lai progression, but what can you do? Very solid show overall.

Highlights: Spectacle, Lunar Pursuit, 42, HAB**, Pygmy, Robots (2**), Lai

January 25, 2009

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