June 02, 2016

Stone > Waltz definitely standard, but not bad. Mulberry's > Catalyst sandwich was great i thought. Hope for the crowd pleaser > Reactor to end. Maybe not "amazing" front to back. But the Mulberry's > Catalyst worth a listen.

Truckers has a nice peak on it. Cissy Strut intro makes it quite fun I think. Buddha > Ladies segment is absolutely fire. The chill jam > Widow is pleasant and welcome after the ride leading up to it. Though Widow peaks hard > Buddha and it's really well done. Rockafella a simple cap to the set.

Highwire > Swen made for a solid enough encore.

Great show and it’s was also Allen’s birthday.

First set starts with standard stone > waltz. Then things come alive with an awesome mulberry’s catalyst dream. The Hope reactor ends the set. Overall it was an ok set imo

Second set is the juice. Cissy strut tease intro into truckers. Then they start buddha which is always jammed well in Colorado. This one was extra and built up well into inverted ladies then the slow it down in widow. Love this song. Always a treat when they play it. This jams well into the end of Buddha. Stand alone rockafella ends the show. Midi hit all the right notes.

Encore was highwire and out of this it went into a sick dNb jam then into the end of Sven properly.

I won’t lie – on paper, the first set is almost as boring as it could possibly look. How did it play out? Stone > Waltz is standard. Mulberry’s takes its time as usual leaving the type 1 jam out of the song, but eventually they settle into a breakbeat jam. This doesn’t have much time to develop, although where they were going wasn’t necessarily that interesting anyway, so it’s alright. The jam out of Catalyst doesn’t do much for me. It’s not awful, but there’s nothing that makes me want to re-listen to this, and there are parts that are just downright boring. The jam out of Hope is about what I’d expect from the majority of Hope jams. It’s fast, DNB jamming with nothing really interesting happening. I also think they rush the Reactor ending. Basically a wasted set. Truckers Choice is not a great start to the second set, either.

Buddha starts to change things. The jam out is very digital. Lots of great noises coming from Magner and from Allen. The first several minutes of this jam are a sonic assault and will keep your head bobbing like Brownstein on stage. They get really dark and twisted for a little bit, and pretty much everything in this jam is straight-up fire. The jam out of Ladies begins with a composed sounding jam with a bunch of key changes. This is pretty boring, but around the 9-minute mark they finally escape this very forced sounding key-change jam and they get into some really pretty stuff. This is Blissco for a short while, though they lose focus pretty quickly and frankly I think this is not as great as it could have been if Barber had a little better focus here. I like Widow in the Rain. It’s not amazing, but it’s not a bad tune. They should have kept it in rotation. Anyway, jam out is very meh, though the Buddha peak is really well done and pretty hard-hitting. Rockafella is not bad, but there’s not much memorable here either. The Highwire jam gets pretty weird as things get closer to Svenghali ending. This isn’t necessarily incredible, but it’s certainly a highlight as they’re willing to allow this to keep getting weirder and weirder. I like it.

Highlights: Buddha**, Ladies, Highwire*