July 31, 2014

Shimmy has a long piece of improv that features a few distinct sections. None of these sections interest me all that much, and feels a little bit like they’re on autopilot here to start the show. The Helix jam here has a great theme to begin, and around the 3-minute mark, Allen drops the e-kick which punctuates the remainder of this jam. Magner’s leads here are on point, and Barber is content to play little flourishes of notes in the background for a minute or two. Around the 5-minute mark, Barber steps a little bit more into the spotlight, and he and Magner play some great counterpoint with one another. This is a really neat jam overall, though as is the case with a lot of things in this era, they simply leave this too quickly. The jam they land on instead is an uptempo funk jam with heavy Funky Town teases from Magner. As corny as this is, I think it works really well. Humu’s jam isn’t really focused enough for me to connect in any way. Pilin has a really cool jam that features Magner on a bunch of weird synths for the first few minutes. I don’t typically love the DNB jams they play, but this one is mostly solid. The Morph jam has some great leads from Magner, but as a whole this just isn’t interesting enough to keep my attention.

I won’t lie, the second set, on paper, is about as atrocious as a Biscuits set could look to me. I can’t think of much that looks less interesting than the band playing TGD songs with two former TGD members. Just not the reason I listen to this band. Memphis 1 and 2 are both fairly generic jambandy stuff. West LA Fadeaway is not awful, but not interesting either. Shakedown Street has another set of jambandy jams. Not much here is of interest to me. The rest of the set, it’s a lot more of the same. The Space segment is unbelievably cool, and is probably the highlight of the night. It sucks it takes them imitating the Dead to get to this type of jam, but I’ll take it. The Caterpillar jam features a bunch of audio samples from Obama and Romney, and I’m not sure who is triggering these but it’s incredibly boring. I Know You Rider has a decent little jam in it, but at this point I’m just thankful that the show is over.

Highlights: Helix, Pilin, Space**