March 26, 2016

The opening jam sounds like it’s going to be Shem-Rah from the very beginning. I’d go so far as to call this a Shem-Rah fakeout in some ways. Regardless, it’s a solid opening jam. The portion around the 6-minute mark until B&C is great, and has a really cool uplifting theme from Magner. This is near Blissco levels, but they don’t flesh it out as much as I’d like. The jam out of B&C is all about Magner. The riff he creates around 6:05 is one of his classic eighth note patterns that does a great job at pushing the jam forward. In my mind, riffs like this are the Magner equivalent of Barber’s minimalist riffs. He ditches this only to come back to it a few times. Frankly I think this jam is a little all over the place, and at some point it becomes clear this is just a long, drawn-out Bombs intro. However, for what this is I think it works well. No reinventing the wheel here, but very solid, and lots of cool e-drum work from Allen. I think this loses a lot of what makes it interesting when Allen drops the e-kick. They feel a little pigeonholed at that point.

Bombs > Shelby. WOW. For me, this might be jam of the year. The first few minutes out of Bombs, they riff on the Bombs second section. However, they eventually brings things way down, only to build them back up. At 13:38, Magner develops the bones of what becomes an absolutely incredible theme. The first few times he’s playing this melody, he’s using this sweeping pad patch. At 14:07, he switches to this detuned, plucky synth, and further develops the melody. This is unbelievable, because you can actually HEAR him thinking out the melody as he plays it over and over again. You can tell that he knows there’s some aspect of it that isn’t quite there yet, and he feels around for what exactly the missing piece is. He messes with a few effects, but around the 16-minute mark, Brownstein switches to an always useful I-VII-VI-V descending chord progression. Clearly this sets off a massive light bulb in Magner’s head, and at 16:09, he plays THE RIFF for the first time. He modifies the end of the riff to take it from a pretty good melody to an absolutely hauntingly beautiful melody. This has such an eerie feeling to it, and yet there’s something gorgeous about it as well. At this point, the focus is so much on Magner that it suddenly dawns on you that the rest of the band has been building around him. He switches the detuned plucky patch to a detuned saw/sine, and it changes the jam from great to incredible. Barber continues developing his accent riffs, and Brownstein and Allen build with greater intensity and focus. The band ascends over and over again, and in this moment they perfectly encapsulate what this band has always been about: controlled chaos. This jam is a freight train on fire being chased by death itself, and it feels like a single wrong note or a single wrong thought might bring everything to a complete and utter collapse. They build again and again, and suddenly the chord shift to the Shelby peak hits at the perfect time. The SOLE drawback to this entire jam (other than that it has to ultimately end) is that when the band switches to the Shelby progression, Allen weirdly triggers his e-kick several times, apparently unintentionally. Other than that, this is a flawless Shelby peak. It’s one of the best the band has ever played, period.

The jam out of Shelby is a little too all over the place for me. It has a portion that starts to sound like it’s going to get very cool, around 15:10. Things get dark and dissonant, and it sounds like they’re ready to ride the momentum from the rest of the set and just get weird. Unfortunately, this lasts about 40 seconds and they ditch it to head elsewhere. This turns into a Ladies peak, but it’s done much slower than it typically is. It’s a unique version, but not a particularly good one. The jam out of Ladies is really weird for me. They do a great job listening to each other and developing a theme, but I don’t really care about the theme at all; it’s just not interesting.

This is an interesting version of Hope. The first 6 minutes of the jam are a pretty standard breakbeat Hope jam. However, around the 12-minute mark they flip a switch and it turns into a fast paced trance jam. This is very Magner and Barber heavy. If you like dark-and-dirty trance jams, maybe just start the show here. The jam out of Waves begins with the standard trance jam, but they slow down to a half-time dub jam around the 20-minute mark. I really like what Magner’s playing around 20:45, and it has this really ominous, creepy sound to it. Unfortunately, he drops that, and the playing becomes a little more straightforward. I think they sometimes rely on the dub jams as a crutch, and they often are pretty uninteresting. This one develops a really nice groove around the 26-minute mark, with Barber playing a slick little melody to counterbalance Magner’s organ playing. From here, they continue to grow this jam, and it develops into a bit of a more traditional jamband sound as they head to Mr. Don. Barber has some great chord work here, and this section is really well done.

The jam out of Don is another old-school sounding jam, and while they come together nice, I just again am not that moved by this jam. It feels like they developed a really nice foundation, but then never did anything with the foundation itself. Home is a really cool song, and the jam coming out of it is really nicely played. I don’t think this is outstanding or anything (certainly not compared to the plethora of other fantastic jams in this show), but it’s a solid, straightforward jam back into Helix. Caves > Don encore is meh.

Highlight: Jam*, B&C, Bombs**, Hope**, Waves

Bombs > Shelby rose is THE star of the show