December 03, 2014

The first Memphis jam begins in a mostly typical way. Barber’s lead riffs here are decent, but there’s nothing that makes this all that distinctive. This turns into a Rock God Barber showcase, which is never really my cup of tea. The second jam is better immediately. Barber is more focused on minimalist riffs. However, this oddly turns into the same sort of masturbatory Rock God Barber stuff. Magner seems determined to try and bring Barber back down to earth, but no luck. Around 8:20, Barber has some great phrasing littered among the Rock God stuff, and this section is actually very decent. Unfortunately, this is the very tail-end of this section, and by the 9-minute mark, the band has shifted gears into a new theme. They hit on a great two-chord theme for maybe 30 seconds, and depart for something else entirely. Shame, as this too was really neat. The new theme is only given a couple minutes to develop, and ultimately this is really more about getting into the beginning of Rockafella rather than theme building. The Rockafella jam is not bad per se, but it doesn’t hold my attention all that well either. This seems aimless, again, with no real direction from the band. Barber seems to be having a great degree of difficulty so far maintaining focus and intention.

The Hope jam represents most of the stuff that drives me nuts about this band’s “DNB” jamming. The basic theme in this jam is: everybody, play as fast as you can. There’s no cohesion, nothing interesting, right up until they land on the Sven ending theme. The Sven outro jam is always something I enjoy (jamming out of an ending only), but this doesn’t do a whole lot either. I also think they sort of couldn’t figure out how to get into Astronaut’s beginning, and the segue takes far more time than it ought to have. It honestly felt like the last 5 minutes of this jam could have been foregone altogether. The Astronaut jam is the first point of this show that I really am happy about. They develop a haunting, Middle Eastern theme that relies primarily on Magner to do its heavy lifting. This is really solid. The last minute or so of the Astronaut track is an ambient space jam that is very cool. Allen comes back in and they head toward the end of Robots, though this would have been 100 times cooler if from the space Allen came back in with a drumroll followed by the “Go!” section of Robots instead of a build to the end. Oh well.

The Robots jam begins with the usual slow funk jam. Not a lot going on there. Around the 12-minute mark they shift uptempo into a dance jam. This gets quite a bit more interesting, particularly Magner’s leads, several of which do some fun stuff with pitch changing and portamento. This turns into a neat little dance jam. Pretty inside-the-box stuff, but solid regardless. The segue back into the SITA section of Astronaut is ridiculously fluid, and Magner seems to tease Spacebird at various points. The Astronaut jam has a brief Magner-led jam immediately following the SITA section, but this ends after just two minutes or so, and gets into the Spacebird intro. Not a lot of meat to chew on here. The first few minutes out of Spacebird are a pretty typical four-on-the-floor jam. However, around the 7-minute mark, they shift to a more major key, happy theme. They ditch this after just a minute or so and head back to minor key territory, which is a shame. However, Allen drops some e-drums, and suddenly they lock into a cohesive, interesting electronic dance theme. I like this a lot. The interplay between Magner and Barber here is awesome. The transition to Air Song is really well-done, with an almost disco sound to the band when they switch into the Air Song intro. The first couple minutes out of Air Song almost sound like Brownstein is teasing Kamaole Sands, and this portion of the jam is just okay. Around the 9-minute mark they shift uptempo back into a dance gate. This feels like it has potential, but never gets to the next level. The Spacebird peak is well-done to end.

Highlights: Astronaut (1*), Robots, Spacebird*