May 25, 2019

Hope is standard. Rockafella opens up with a nice mellow jam with Marc on MIDI keyboard. Magner focuses on texturing arps, and Barber finds a nice little riff he likes. The Buddha begins with a fantastic jam. Magner has some fantastic riffs and great patches that he’s working with. Brownstein dips into the Changes Jam for like a minute, then leaves. Other than that, this Buddha is dance party central. A lot of nice sections here. The Rock Candy is a solid uptempo jam, but nothing all that memorable, and the switch to Buddha is fairly abrupt. Too abrupt for my taste. Haleakala Crater is a beautiful song, but one of those tunes that’s much more wonderful either listening to the studio version of, or actually physically being in the crowd to experience it live. Re-listening doesn’t do a whole lot. Jigsaw is decent, and they have a couple stretches where it feels like they’re close to really locking in, but they never quite get there. As they get closer to Waves, I think they get quite a bit more cohesive, and the peak is fairly well-done. Rapture is a really cool addition to their catalog, and while the jam out isn’t anything noteworthy on its own, the “peak” that they develop prior to heading back into Waves is really cool, and Barber’s soaring tone is absolutely gorgeous here. The Waves > Jigsaw is a little too meander-y for my tastes, and Barber can’t seem to pick a lane. I don’t care about drum solos at all. The Helix jam starts out immediately with a fantastic groove. Barber is on point here with some great funk-guitar strumming. The Confrontation back into Helix is nothing special, nor is The City jam.

Highlights: Rockafella, Buddha*, Helix