December 31, 2013

Plan B is standard. Lai here is a pretty straightforward jam. I don’t get a whole lot from this, although I love Barber’s tone throughout it. Barber has some neat phrasing during the lead up to the peak, but beyond that, not a lot going on here. KITNO is maybe the worst song possible to have as the countdown song. The Helix jam immediately begins with some neat stuff from Magner. There is an un-noted On Time tease from Magner during this jam that is pretty neat. There’s nothing outside the box here, but it’s got an undeniable groove and is just very solid all around. The Ladies peak is well-done. The Ladies jam begins with very, very sparse guitar from Barber. Magner develops some great leads right off the bat. At 10:50, Brownstein introduces a second chord, and Magner’s leads work beautifully with this movement. Barber’s play gets more involved, and the band creates a cohesive theme around Magner’s lead work. This is again, very nice.

The House Dog jam sees the band almost immediately mess with the drumbeat in a mess of sound around the 4-minute mark to switch from 5/4 to 4/4. This is probably for the best, since 2.0 has always struggled with non-4/4 jams. It is what it is. This is really bizarre though, as they switch back around 5:30 to 5/4. I’m not sure what the point of this was, other than sounding incredibly forced. They go back to 4/4 time just a minute or two. Sorry guys, this is not the band you are. The rest of this jam is just okay. Feels a lot like treading water, and this whole thing felt very disjointed. The HAB jam features a 4-bar riff from Barber. This is a pretty simple riff, but I like the meter of this a lot. This whole section of the jam has a real happy-go-lucky feel to it. That said, holy lord they made it painful to switch back to HDPF. As much as I love House Dog, they probably should retire it. In the jam out of House Dog, Magner keeps repeating, “Who’s a city boy?” with the vocoder. Yeah, this doesn’t get old at all. Once they finally get out of this section, this jam is actually decent. I wouldn’t call it a highlight, but particularly as they get closer to the HAB comeback, they almost hit on a “North American Scum” sounding progression. The jam out of HAB doesn’t move the needle at all for me. Dublights is fine, though I don’t feel like this ever stretches too far outside the song itself. The entirety of Shelby > City > Shelby is very well-worn territory.

CWB > SRB is way too short to be noteworthy. The segue is well-done but that’s about it. The Strobelights jam sounds like a Spraypaint jam from a million miles away. The Confrontation jam is pretty typical. Nothing going on here that’s too far outside the box. A 6-minute Memphis is almost insulting. The HAB > CWB is a neat idea, but would be nice for an actual jam instead of a bridge. Hope is standard. Entire third set is basically throwaway.

Highlights: Helix*, Ladies*, HAB