October 19, 2018

Uber Glue begins the show, and I still legitimately love this song. It’s nothing remarkable from a compositional standpoint, but it’s a well-written song that sets the atmosphere for the night. This particular version is 29-minutes, which has to be a record for this particular song. The first few minutes feel pretty well inside the box, but around the 11:30 mark they venture into more exploratory jamming. Magner comes up with a phenomenal little riff around the 12-minute mark, and Barber is smart enough here to just lay in the background, waiting. They sort of go nowhere for a bit, but around the 17-minute mark, Magner develops another really solid lead. There are parts of this jam that are really nice (including sections that sound like they’re headed toward a Shelby peak). However, there is also a lot of filler here. Caterpillar begins with a nice dance jam, featuring Magner on a gated pad. This has a great feel to it, and I’m not sure why, but big parts of this have an almost oceanic feel to them. This feels like a voyage, and I really like the general meter of the jam. I think the transition to Miracles comes out of nowhere, and frankly could have been done better. The Miracles jam is similarly solid. They have sort of a Middle-Eastern vibe for a good chunk of this jam, and there’s even a portion where I swear Brownstein teases the PBR bassline. Could just be that that progression is somewhat simple, but I thought I heard it. Around the 12-minute mark, this jam takes a really interesting turn. This is suddenly ethereal, dreamy, and has a very unique sound. This almost sounds like a Grateful Dead jam to my ears, but I like it a lot. There is an absolutely sublime dissolution into the Air Song beginning. Holy crap I love this. On the other hand, I couldn’t care less about the Air Song jam. Most of this is boring and bland, and there’s a good chunk that is simply Magner messing around in a solo. Meh. The second Miracles jam has a short Uber Glue jam/tease immediately after, and after that they craft a midtempo jam. This is somewhat monotonous to me, and doesn’t really feel like they ever land on anything remotely interesting. It feels like Magner is trying to pull them into something interesting, but Barber and Brownstein are just adamantly opposed to coming with.

I want to like this Rivers jam so badly. I love this song, and it’s nice to hear it get a real jam. However, this is a long, long time to say nothing at all. The band basically does nothing but tread water for 8 minutes or so. Not really my cup of tea. The first Catalyst jam again, feels like treading water. I think they hit the peak well, but beyond that there’s not much going on here. The second jam has a brief “I Can See Clearly Now the Rain is Gone” sounding jam, mostly from Magner. This is neat. Unfortunately, this portion of the jam is a lone raindrop in a storm of boredom. Marc gets stuck on a bassline that it feels like he plays (and Barber plays off of) for a million, billion years. This is so uninteresting, and yet they allow themselves to settle into this as though it’s some clever, catchy hook. Around the 30-minute mark or so, they finally get on to something else, as they begin the descent into the Abyss intro jam. The jam out of Abyss begins with some interesting melodic/harmonic stuff from Magner. Unfortunately, Brownstein and Barber again get into this weird repeater jam as part of a call-and-response. This is pretty monotonous again. The 10-minute jam out of Abyss feels much longer, and that’s never a good thing. The Boom Shanker jam suffers from the same fate. In this case, it feels again like Marc and Jon are the offenders, as Allen and Magner try to drag the other two to something worth playing. Don has a predictable type 1 jam that never ventures far beyond the song’s confines. The Portal encore is fine.

Highlights: Uber Glue, Caterpillar*, Miracles (1**)