February 02, 2017

The jam out of Coming Home begins with Magner on his xylophone patch and has a great groove to it. Around 8:34 there is so much swirling psychedelia going on and this is absolutely awesome. The I-Man first jam is longer than the traditional bridge jam, and they get into some interesting territory, with lots of communication. This is solid. Oddly enough, the second jam uses the same exact bassline. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a neat bassline, but something different would be nice. Fortunately, Marc ditched this after not too long. Phew. Magner provides some great foundation with pad sweeps aplenty, and the band builds a really nice chord progression, however simplistic it may be. Each instrumental player’s choice of tone and timbre is flawless here, and this develops into a beautiful theme. The lead Magner brings in around the 14th minute feels out of place somewhat, but other than that, this is very, very nice jam. I do think Magner removes the possibility of this going from good to great, but I suppose even he makes mistakes sometimes. They build a solid peak regardless prior to the abrupt drop into Vassillios. Vassillios has another solid jam, featuring some haunting leads from Magner. This does not last nearly as long as it ought to, but it’s nice while it does. The Abraxas jam is this chugging jam that has Allen playing lots of toms, and while the band is in sync, I don’t find this that interesting. They resolve to something more straightforward around the 10-minute mark. They build a decent Blissco-y theme here. I don’t feel this every fully lands, and while they build a nice peak pre-RLH, again I don’t feel like this ever makes me really sit up and take notice. Barber has a couple of really solid lead lines here, but this is really a better peak than it is a jam. The first several minutes out of RLH are forgettable, but around the 10:45 mark the band shifts gears, with Magner leading an exploratory, spacey dance jam.

The Overture jam is okay. I don’t hate it, but the most interesting part of this by far is when they get to the Portal transition. The first few minutes of the Portal jam are okay, but they’re some standard type 1 fare. When they finally leave the type 1 jam, things are less interesting. Weird. The Highwire jam is monotonous. IRW has another throwaway type 1 jam. First Magellan jam is forgettable. The second jam develops a nice little dance jam. Nothing amazing here, but flows nicely into I-Man ending. The Wet > RLH encore is fine.

Highlights: Coming Home**, I-Man (1, 2), Abraxas, RLH, Magellan