October 27, 2017

"Try to have fun, comma 8 comma 1" - Best Brownie lyric evah. Should have called the tune "Yars Revenge"

This show like every show at the Palladium is a banger this 1 more than others. Just a quick ? Who didn’t give that 35m Therapy 5stars??? If u somehow didn’t like the jam, the exploration of many themes & the awesome improvisation that took the song far away from Therapy is incredible. Besides that this show is 1 of the best of the year & for dozens of people I’ve talked w/ or played it for no one has disagreed that this is amazing!

I’ll break down set 1 real quick. 35 minute therapy is everything. Some of the best jamming of 2017. Barber nails the vocal line of the sweet dreams with slaying Melodies. Magner just proves to us again why he is the best in the biz. Incredible just listen.

Don’t sleep on the second set tho it’s a real heater. Set 2 starts with one of the best triumphs I’ve heard In A long time. Jam out of this is crazy. Into the middle section of robots which flows nicely into the stranger things theme then patiently back into the robots ending. So sweet!!

Next segment is a big Spraypaint with IFL and tempest sandwiched in there. Brownie was kicking nasty grooves throughout this nice piece here. The sandwich section was all instrumental where IFL and tempest really complimented each other imo

Stand alone ladies encore. Nice and tight and good to see it place at the end.

This review is solely to discuss the 10/27/17 Therapy, which is an all-time version and easily one of the best standalones of 2017. It isn't all perfect but features a number of stages of improvisation and is worth a closer look.

Initially, the band is locked into the typical Therapy entry point, with Barber shredding like a madman for a good 4 minutes. Eventually this subsides, and everything breaks down to nothing.

While Barber took over the entry, he basically sits in the background for an extended period of time, sitting on some Therapy noodles while other bandmembers take the lead. Magner is first, synching up with Allen with some see-sawing trianglewaves. Barber's staccato riffs still rooted in Therapy help provide balance to prevent stagnation, but things are only barely getting started.

Magner briefly switches to washes, and Marc basically locks into a variation of Barber's riffs, but the band pulls back on a full launch into this idea, including Magner. Out of this second full breakdown, however, Allen drops an e-subkick that really propels things forward. Magner comes in with echoing raindrop plinks in a subtle arp/delay, complementing the electronic thump with some background robotics. And over top of this, Barber, who has been subdued this whole time, now starts to elongate his notes, slighlty more shrilly and loudly and come more in the foreground. But it is really Magner driving this jam at this point, as he builds on another layer of shrill 80s square wave synth. At this point, the whole thing starts to feel like a Ladies jam, but Magner has a different melodic line that seems to have triggered something for Marc, and a little bit later after a roll of the toms, the whole jam shifts at once and drops into "Sweet Dreams" ~10 minutes in.

Dropping into a straight up tease gives Barber a little better grounding and purpose and helps focus the band's energy to that next level. It definitely gets wrapped in this theme for awhile, but it's a high-energy moment for sure, and you can feel the whole thing start taking off in a way that it hasn't to this point. The band being fully locked in on this idea gives everyone a little bit more freedom to go off on their own, since there's such a clear grounding. For Barber, that means some fun little Wayne's World diddleydoos, almost transitioning entirely out of Sweet Dreams. Allen takes him up on this as well, but Magner and Marc get a little stuck in Sweet Dreams. Barber circles back a couple times, but eventually blasts the siren pedal and forces everyone to get unstuck.

Out of the cacophony, Barber cues them one last run through Sweet Dreams as loud and fast as possible, and Allen gets off the e-drums to pop through sonically, which seems to prompt Magner to transition to piano as well. Barber is just shredding shredding his brains out at this point, and at 16-17 minutes into the jam we finally exit with a true breakdown.

As with many breakdowns, there's a little tentativeness here. Marc first pulls out some Seven Nation Army-like bass riffs, and then we rebuild with Marc and Barber trading complementary melodies while Magner pings in the background. After a bit, Magner comes in with some descending space-xylophone lines, and Barber plays these sparse elongated notes that seem designed to test the waters and find new space.

At around 20 minutes into the jam, they are fully locked into a new idea and begin to emerge with this intertwining melody beautifully synchopating Magner and Barber, where they're basically completing each others' sentences. While they're hitting a little harder groove, Marc starts cueing them up for something dubbier, and Allen begins accenting that slower, swinging tempo with some off-kilter fills. Out of all this comes another Magner 80's synth sound that brightens the whole landscape, while Barber goes into a dissonant minor territory at first then follows Magner and the band is in unison again with a very shimmying rock jam.

Magner's piano starts sending them back to Therapy, which Marc immediately picks up on, but Allen's drumming at this point keeps this crushing peak in slower headbanging territory, in a good way, allowing the whole sound of it to swallow everything with its bigness as Magner and Marc keep pulling them into the Therapy progression.

Eventually, Allen gives in and stops the swing so now it's just Barber shredding while everyone else builds the drop into the composition, allowing for the Type 1 shredding that perfectly caps a version this big.

With so much space, there's a lot of uncertainty, but because of that you get two fully separate and fully-developed ideas, the first related to Sweet Dreams and the second a newly explored space a sidestep away from Therapy itself, peaking into oblivion. These are the moments we live for, as fans, where the band themselves seem not to know where the music is taking us, but we get there just the same, in fistpumping glory.

The Crystal Ball jam has Marc using this uninteresting quarter-note bassline that I feel like leaves the entire band stuck in mundanity for far longer than they need to. Around the 7-minute mark, he ditched this bassline, but at this point they’re very nearly at the transition to Mulberry’s. The jam in Mulberry’s, the jam back into Ball, and the jam in Ball are all forgettable. The Therapy jam has several different sections, all of which are fantastic. They have a jam on Sweet Dreams which is really neat, and they build an absolutely phenomenal peak. This jam is 20 minutes or so of great improv and warrants multiple re-listens.

Triumph has a very solid, thematic jam. This feels like a Robots 1 jam from the very beginning, and it has some nice progressions throughout from Brownstein. I don’t think this ever quite hits the next level, but it’s solid and long, and that warrants a highlight. Robots has a fantastic first jam. The progression and accompanying melodies at 5:45 are reminiscent of the Stranger Things theme a little bit. In fact, after a few minutes, I think it’s clear that’s exactly what they’re playing. Regardless, I like it! After this, they develop a really awesome theme. Around 12:25, Magner comes up with this great progression using a sort of stringy-sounding pad. Honestly, this reminds me a bit of the verses of Rivers, played with a DNB backing beat. This turns out to be really cool. The first several minutes out of Spraypaint are more typical major key jamming. Around the 11:30 mark they get into minor key territory and the jam gets more interesting. Magner has a nice plucky synth that overlays on top of Barber’s repeated minimalist forms. There is no jam out of I Feel Love as they just start playing Tempest. The jam out of Tempest gets very pretty around the 9:30 mark. It kind of sounds like a very lowkey Fanfare for the Common Man jam in some ways. This is Blissco and I love it. Ladies encore is just okay.

Highlights: Therapy**, Triumph, Robots*, Spraypaint, Tempest**