February 08, 2009

Overture and Meditation are both jamless to begin the show. Overtures around this era were not necessarily my favorite so I don’t really care that they didn’t jam this one. Particularly given the fact that this was a smaller, one-set show. Vassillios is the first jam of the night. This is mostly forgettable midtempo jamming, however at the 8-minute mark or so, Brownstein starts playing a baseline that has the same progression and cadence as Rainbow Song. I almost thought they were headed to a Rainbow Song fakeout or maybe even a segue. In any event, they eventually head uptempo, leading to a big peak into Ladies. The peak is okay, but nothing special. Ladies begins with the band getting stuck in a bit of a repeater jam. They keep doing this motif where the fourth bar of the theme is this quarter-note descending pattern. I don’t find this interesting at all, but the band seems to be stuck in it for several minutes. Around the 13-minute mark, Magner switches to this sort of a hollow square wave lead, and the resulting melodic work he does is fantastic. The rest of the band doesn’t quite come along with him entirely, most notably Brownstein is left behind. However, this manages to be pretty decent nonetheless, and ultimately results in a great build into Confrontation. There is a little transition “jam” into Shelby, but this is basically like 16 bars and just the band filling space. Not a real jam. Shelby begins with a standard Shelby DNB jam, but around the 8-minute mark, they drop to half-time and Magner starts playing this really cool eighth-note pattern. This had potential as a cool theme, but this is just a little too repetitive as they head into The City. The jam out of The City begins with a jambandy jam, which I actually don’t mind coming out of this song. This is well-played and actually has a decent theme, which they carry into the double-time change-up as they head back towards Shelby. The peak in Shelby is very well done, with my only complaint being I wish they had held off on the switch from minor to major for another eight bars or so. It felt like Barber was still in the midst of going kind of crazy in the minor key section and they just launched back into major. Regardless, well-done.

What follows is the best standalone Caterpillar of all-time. This begins with the band sort of feeling out the jam, and Magner starts playing some synth fills that turn into a full-on synth lead. He’s messing around a lot with the resonance filters during this jam, and Magner is just much more active in general than usual. At 5:18, Magner throws out some long, evolving synth pads that act as a kind of call-and-response for a little bit. Barber is mostly in the background during the beginning portions of this jam and it’s really just Magner leading things. At the 7-minute mark, Allen cuts the beat and for about 30 seconds they let things breathe. When they come back in around 7:30, Magner has an absolutely ridiculously cool synth lead with this synth that sounds like it’s got the flu. Sick. Brownstein switches on to the MIDI keyboard, and Barber is using his more digital guitar effects, and this whole jam just builds into an absolutely awesome piece of thematic work from the entire band. Around the 11-minute mark, the band makes clear it’s building to something, and the ending of Caterpillar begins to peak its head. The resulting build from everybody – particularly Magner – is absolutely monstrous. Highwire to end the show is jamless.

Highlights: Ladies, The City*, Caterpillar**