April 03, 2009

Rivers has the usual 2-3 minute jam. Meh. They at least play the ending really well. TVM 1 is type 1 and forgettable. The second jam just does not do a whole lot for me. The SITA jam initially has this dissonant sound to it, but they eventually open this up into an exploratory, spacey sound that works well. I wish they would have explored a little bit more in this second half, but they get outside the box enough for me here that I noted it as a highlight. There's also a very brief Rock Candy tease from Barber during the "peak" before the SITA lyrics. Cool. The jam coming out of Astronaut is fantastic from note one. Barber is strumming a simplistic pattern and Magner has some great textural stuff with sine wave leads to initially create some ambience. Magner's distorted hits are a great addition here, and at the 20-minute mark, he comes in with a lead melody that's just absolutely perfect. I thought this got much less interesting as they hit the Gangster track and Marc switches on to MIDI keyboard, but overall I still loved this jam. Very brief jam out of Gangster into Spacebird. The Spacebird jam back into the ending of Astronaut has a very cool theme, and while I wish (again) this was extended further, it was really nice to end the set.

Mirrors to begin the second set is jamless. Memphis first jam begins at a hip-hop tempo, but without e-drums. Magner jumps on to an arpeggiator early on. He also has some good stuff with a simple sine wave, and overall I enjoyed this jam. The second jam begins with the band sort of vamping on the root note, while Magner plays a nice building progression on the top of everything on the organ. Eventually he switches the organ patch to an electronic strings sound, which is a nice change in my view. I enjoyed this but felt like they abandoned it way too quickly for the switch into Caves. Caterpillar is fine. This is pretty paint-by-numbers Biscuits, and not something I ever need to listen to again. The jam out of Abraxas has a solid dance groove from the start. Around the 12:00 mark, the band shifts into a darker sound, and this turns into a really cool theme. I really like the jam in Crickets. Part of this is because it sounds like a precursor to the incredible 04/20/2009 Crickets jam, one of my all-time favorites. This is at the same tempo, features similar MIDI basslines from Marc, so it's evocative of the 4/20 Crix for me. That said, stylistically, this is very different. This has a bit of a "funk" feel to it at times, but overall I enjoyed this enough to listen to it a couple of times. At the 10:45 mark, Brownstein sort of plays the bassline for Liquid Handcuffs, though not in the same meter. Either way, they make a huge build here before the drop back into Crickets. Awesome stuff. The final jam of the night is Crickets into the ending of Caterpillar. They build this up so patiently and so well that I don't even care that this is basically just a long Caterpillar ending jam. Really solid regardless. Love it. Rockafella encore is jamless.

Highlights: Astronaut (1, 2*), Spacebird, Memphis (1, 2), Abraxas*, Crickets (1*, 2)

The Very Moon => Astronaut => Gangster => Spacebirdmatingcall => Astronaut section (all of the 1st except for the first two tunes) is one of the best sections of an already immense spring tour; this being the start of the west coast run. Without diving into every peak, jam, tease, inversion etc I will just suggest you listen to this amazing hour+ of music. Barber in A+ form, magical transitions and a beautiful recording. The 2nd set doesn't live up but that's all good. There is a real funky MEMPHIS and the Cat outro is beautiful. Other than that stay with the 1st set chunk I spoke of which 9/10 stars. peace & nugs

Pretty good show for it being a tour opener! Uber Glue > Rivers was something I'd see a few times that year so that's not really anything to write about for me. The Very Moon > Astronaut > Gangster > Spacebirdmatingcall > Astronaut was super solid (I love all those songs so much), but my favorite jam of the night was coming out of Caterpillar... Super cool jam that transitions from Gm to F#m every two bars, which led to a pretty evil vibe and cool Barber licks. They unfortunately screw up part of Abraxas pretty badly (Allen and Marc are a beat ahead of Magner and Barber or something like that) so that was kind of a buzzkill. The nights following this show are way better, but it's worth a listen if you like to hear the whole progression of how the epicness of 2009 unfolded.