July 15, 2017

Caves has a forgettable downtempo jam, although I think as it gets closer to Loose Change it gets marginally better. Loose Change has a middle jam, and this never really stretches far outside the box. The B&C jam has a neat little descending riff from Magner beginning at the 7:00 mark. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really feel like Barber is in the mood for listening, and he makes no really attempt to connect here (though to his credit, neither does Marc). Eventually, it becomes clear this is headed for Highwire and nowhere else. Highwire is the first jam of the show that really grabs me in any way. Around the 9-minute mark, Barber comes up with a great little two-part riff. He ditches this a little too quickly, and they can’t seem to decide on whether they want to build a theme or just noodle around all night. Sigh. Tempest actually has a couple of consecutive minutes that are enjoyable, which is nice. In fact, this whole jam is mostly solid. Nothing crazy going on here, but a nice little dance jam. Barber seems to maintain focus and plays off Brownstein’s Buddha-esque progression well. The first Mulberry’s jam is the standard type 1 fare. The second jam features a healthy dosage of toms from Allen, and Magner does what he can to make this interesting, but Barber just seems determined to meander and slop his way up and down the guitar neck. Morph is actually pretty decent. Not marvelous, mind you, but the band seems to finally actually play with one another. Barber in particular here plays some repeating riffs that he builds on fairly organically rather than simply forcing a totally unrelated idea one after the next. The Waves peak is pretty rough. They follow this up with a 3-minute jam out of the middle into the second half guitar riff, but then don’t do vocals. Instead, they build this decently into Champions. Not something I’d relisten to, but not bad. The jam out of Champions features Barber on his siren effect the first minute or two. At 9:30, we hear a second guitar for the first time. I hadn’t realized initially that THam was sitting in here, and it was immediately obvious. His riff here is perfectly fitting, though it leaves me impatient for Barber to get out of the way with the siren pedal. The jam out of Exodus is neat. The first couple minutes have a spacey feel, and THam’s effects are out in full force. They provide a great atmospheric vibe to the upper register here, and this is a unique sound. Wish they’d carry it out longer, but it seems the point was to tease a SITA jam. They leave this and build a guitar-heavy dance jam. I really think THam brings out some greatness in Barber here. Barber is much more focused, and the jam greatly benefits. What results is a fantastic wall-of-sound jam built into a really nice peak. They leave this peak and come back into Waves with some phenomenal playing from the entire band. THam’s playing here is a lot more jambandy than Barber ever sounds, but it’s so great that I don’t really care. The jam out of Waves begins with a quick trance jam, but around the 11:30 mark, the band slows in tempo. By 12:30 they settle into a slower jam, with Magner using a slow-evolving cutoff-changing patch on the top of the jam. I always love this sound because it gives that sort of science fiction-y sound. Barber and THam lock in to a nice little pair of riffs together, and even though this is getting close to a dreaded repeater jam, I don’t hate it. After a few minutes, they start speeding up, and THam goes off on a solo. Again, I don’t hate this, but this doesn’t do it as much for me.

The third set begins with a Dub Dribble. The first several minutes of the jam are pretty typical. However, at 8:50, Magner brings in this gated patch and layers it at the top end. This has such a cool psychedelic effect on the jam, and he brings in an eerie lead to partner with it shortly thereafter. The next several minutes are generally quite good, with my favorite section being around the 15:30 mark (particularly Magner’s leads). Around 17:30, they start building in pace, and what results is a nicely-player major key jam. Magner washes the top end with some nice sweeps, and Barber’s playing here is mostly good. The Helix jam is nothing novel, but it’s well-played. At the 8-minute mark, they change keys and shift toward I Feel Love. IFL has a short type 1 jam in the middle, but this is really just a vamp in the main theme. The IFL jam is not nearly long enough, and Brownstein tips his hand to the Tricycle segue way, way too early. The Tricycle jam has some potential, but it’s literally like 90 seconds long before they drop into Air Song. Let the jams breathe. Air Song itself has a jam that begins with the typical downtempo jam and slowly morphs into an uptempo dance jam back into Helix. Not bad, not great. About what you’d expect from this pairing. Spraypaint encore is nice. Takes a while to get going, but when it finally does, it turns into a nice dance jam.

Highlights: Tempest, Morph, Exodus*, Dribble (1), Helix