November 16, 2017

Hope is standard. Shelby is meh. The City is okay, though I think that they never really pick a lane. There’s a portion around the 14-minute mark where it sounds like they could be headed for Munchkin or something. This gets decent near the switch to Naeba, but overall there’s a lot of filler here. Naeba jam is mostly filler as well. SITA jam gets extended slightly, but nothing too outstanding. The second Astro jam has a great energy from the start, but they never really land on a theme that does much for me.

The second set begins with a 48-minute Nowhere Jam. I’ve broken this up into the following sections:

0:00 - 10:17: Tom-Heavy Intro Section 10:17 - 21:59: E-Drum Dance Jam 21:59 - 27:10: Nothing Jam 27:10 - 33:46: Magner Jam 33:46 - 42:37: E-Kick Jam 42:37 - 48:07: Closing Jam

The first jam begins with a methodical sounding slow-ish drumbeat, heavy on toms. The band slowly gets more comfortable with this jam. While I don’t think this is necessarily all that interesting for at least the first several minutes, there is something very, very raw about it. I imagine the band had many of these types of jam sessions in the early days of the band (sans Allen of course), and this is interesting in that respect. As far as the music, this portion of the jam is much more focused on building a rhythm, rather than building a theme. The second jam is immediately more danceable, with the band shifting uptempo in a deliberate way. After a few minutes, Magner seems to want to settle on a moving progression, but either nobody else is paying attention or nobody else cares. Instead, they settle into an e-drum heavy section which has Barber playing a neat little plucky riff. They almost sound like they’re playing a dance version of the chorus of 7-11 during part of this, which I’m okay with. I’m denoting this as a highlight, even though it’s not necessarily mindblowing. It has a decent groove, and Magner’s string synths fit in very nicely. Somewhere during this jam they switch from a more typical dance jam to a piano/guitar-led dance jam that sounds a lot more like something a crunchy jamband might play. I don’t hate it, although by all rights I should. The third jam begins with the band with either some great communication or (more likely) a composed portion. There’s a descending progression that Magner and Brownstein play far too in sync for it to be simple musical communication. They tread water for a few minutes here that seem to pass with almost nothing happening. Around the 27-minute mark, Brownstein switches to a distorted bass sound, and the band vamps for a bit. Around the 30-minute mark, Magner takes the lead for the first time during this segment, and has some interesting stuff to say. Some of his note choice here is really great. The next section has sort of a retro feel to it for the first several minutes. Eventually, Allen drops the e-kick and this turns into a fantastic dance party. This has some great textural arp patches from Magner, and they eventually turn this into a very happy-go-lucky Blissco-y jam. The last jam begins with a nice major progression from Brownstein, and has some great pads on the top end from Magner. This is probably my favorite section of the Nowhere Jam.

The Vassillios jam takes a little while to get started. The first few minutes they have a four-bar theme that’s split into sort of a call-and-response jam. I don’t hate this, but it only lasts a couple minutes. Around the 10:30 mark, they drop into a nice secondary jam, with a dark midtempo sound. This is a little too all-over-the-place for me to want to re-listen. There were some good ideas here, but they jump from one to the next far too quickly. The Abraxas jam is unique in that they almost immediately get into some major key jamming. This is pretty clearly a long Story intro jam from basically the very beginning of the jam. It’s not terrible, and I actually kind of enjoy this. The Story jam is painfully mediocre, and Mitts is the “punk” version. Bleh.

Highlights: Nowhere Jam (2, 4, 6*), Abraxas