May 26, 2017

I think most of this Lai jam is mediocre. However, they hit a moment at 6:40 that is absolutely wonderful. Barber and Magner become a swirling ball of psychedelia, and this whirlwind overlaid on top of the changing chord progression from Brownstein is really solid. This turns into a really solid Lai peak. The Shelby jam does absolutely nothing for me. The SITA jam gets a little out there. Around the 7-minute mark, Magner has a bunch of detuned sounds that get more and more out of tune (intentionally) before returning to key. By the 10-minute mark the band has left the more straightforward dance jam sound for a healthy dose of tomwork from Allen and rhythmic work from the melodic players. I don’t think this is great, and there’s nothing here that stands out to me in the actual theme, though I do like that they’re doing something a little different. The jam out of Helix is a pretty straightforward dance jam, but I think it’s pretty solid, and builds to a nice crescendo back into SITA. The 2nd Astronaut jam is massively meh.

The jam out of Caterpillar begins with the standard midtempo jam, but has some nice leads from Magner on the Virus. This mostly pretty solid, and even has a nice, happy-go-lucky jam near the end before getting darker for the Abraxas switch. Abraxas itself has a fairly boring jam. They have a full blown Astronaut ending fakeout (tease?) which seems weird considering they already played it earlier in the show. Okay. The Munchkin jam doesn’t do much for me. Brownstein is playing some chords, which is notable, but the jam itself is forgettable. Rockafella is a jammy sounding piece of improv that doesn’t really resonate with me. As they get closer to the Helix return, they hit an upbeat, major key theme that works really well, but this literally lasts 90 seconds before they hit Helix. The Spacebird jam feels like it has potential. The first minute or so, Magner messes around with plucky xylophone-esque patches, but he ditches this pretty quickly and they force an ending instead. Meh.

Highlights: Lai, Helix (1), Caterpillar