December 30, 2016

Dribble begins with a short jam that is some light filler. The first Dribble jam has some fantastic leads from Magner. I’m not usually a big Dribble first jam guy, but this one is hard not to keep nodding my head to. This eventually turns into a midtempo disco jam. The Shem-Rah jam is okay, but just doesn’t go much beyond the standard dance jam. They have a portion with a definitive two-chord progression, but they just don’t build on it as much as I’d like to see. The Nughuffer “jam” immediately becomes Tempest, then Abyss, then Tempest, then back to a Nughuffer jam. I’ll count this as a single jam, but it’s not why I listen to this band. The jam out of Nughuffer is not awful, although the segue into Mulberry’s makes me realize just how close Mulberry’s and Morph sound. Mulberry’s has a middle jam that’s boring, and a near-non-existent jam into Nughuffer ending. I hate this first set.

The Caterpillar has a pretty typical Caterpillar jam, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. This is solid, though not overly remarkable. The Spacebird jam isn’t horrible, but they never seem to get out of the Spacebird cadence of the four quarter-notes in the 8th bar of the jam. Not sure what Brownstein’s deal is here, but this is frustrating. The Resurrection jam never gets a chance to stretch its legs, and is basically middling jambandy stuff. Meh. Neither Air Song nor Sven do much of anything for me. I think the ending of Caterpillar is decent, but they basically always crush that ending. I actually really like this Home Again encore. A lot of Barber and Magner’s phrasing here is very nice.

Highlights: Dribble, Home Again