May 26, 2018

The show begins with a Nowhere Jam. For the purposes of scoring, I’ve split this as follows:

Jam 1 (Basis-y Jam): 0:00 – 13:09 Jam 2 (Jam Funk): 13:09 – 18:55 Jam 3: (Dance Jam): 18:55 – End

The first jam feels like it has to be headed toward a Basis intro or something similar. The band begins the spacey psychedelic journey with some great textural synths from Magner and very restrained, ethereal guitar work from Barber. This is very cool, and a fantastic start to the show. Around the 5-minute mark, Magner brings in the pan flute patch, and things go up another notch. Love it. Around the 7:30 mark, Magner ditches the pan flute in favor of an echo-y synth patch that plays really well against Barber’s repeated riff. Around the 12-minute mark the band hits this little ascending progression that the whole band kind off locks into. This is one of those instances where they’re clearly communicating with each other, but the communication itself is pretty boring. Jam 2 begins around the 13-minute mark where the whole band drops the intensity substantially. The drumbeat drops again and they have a nice downtempo groove going. However, this turns into some pretty generic jam-funk after just a minute or two, and this is totally not for me. At 18:55 Allen flips on the four-on-the-floor beat and they embark on a dancier jam. There is a lot of treading water in this jam, and I don’t think much of it grabs the listener in any meaningful way.

The DTTB jam is fine. It never gets into anything memorable, but it’s not bad by any means either. Around 11:30 they drop the majority of what they’re doing for the transition to Bombs. The Bombs jam is fantastic. Magner immediately adds a brilliant lead that guides the band through a spacey, trance odyssey. Frustratingly, around the 11-minute mark, the band decides that they want to tease I Feel Love for what feels like the billionth time. Just. Stop. Or kill me. One of the two. When they leave this tease, what they resolve into is not nearly as interesting as what they were playing before. Confrontation begins with a pretty typical uptempo funk jam. However, around the 9-minute mark, Brownstein switches to a much lower bass tone, almost reminiscent of Sweating Bullets. This quickly turns into a DTTB ending, which is telegraphed from a ways away.

TVM features Barber missing a bunch of the lyrics to the song. You know, the song that he himself wrote and has played/sung a billion times. First jam is the typical type 1 jam that doesn’t stray too far from the beaten path. Second jam meanders for a while before making its way to Pat and Dex. Meh. The first Catalyst jam stays pretty close to the song itself before making its way to Catalyst ending. Not a lot going on here. The second jam begins immediately with a half-time groove. They pick up the pace fairly quickly and it becomes apparent that this is headed to Morph ending. This is fine, but nothing I’d listen to again or note as a highlight. The Reactor jam begins with some great stuff, particularly from Allen. However, it quickly devolves into the usual cacophony of dissonant sound with no direction, which never moves me a whole lot. Home Again features a trance jam in the middle, which is a neat quirk, though the content of the jam itself leaves me wanting. The Dublights encore includes another neat little trance jam, followed by a solid ending. This is far too short to be all that useful on its own, but it’s not an awful encore.

Highlights: Nowhere Jam (1*), Bombs*