December 30, 2019

Memphis is forgettable, and the second jam is downright boring. The jam out of I-Man has a nice little four-chord progression that has some cool themes before they speed things up and head toward Cyclone. Cyclone starts out with a gorgeous bit of playing, venturing near Blissco territory, then suddenly shifts away, led by Brownstein toward a minor key. Shame. Lunar Pursuit didn’t grab me, but I liked what they were doing coming out of Loose Change. The initial “funky” jam is meh, but as they pick up pace there are some great themes going on. Magner has this sort of “Wookie” sound (think the sound that Chewbacca makes) going throughout part of it that I really like. Very textural stuff. The Shimmy jam gets dark and trancy, and builds solidly into Rocket Science. Honestly thought it was headed for Caterpillar for a short while. With respect to Rocket Science, I’m still not really into this song, but I’m heavily into what they’re doing out of the song. That bouncy square wave Magner is playing with is fantastic and Barber is fairly restrained in allowing this jam to build. However, this jam doesn’t evolve enough for me. They got stuck on these “repeater” jams in 2003 that drove me absolutely crazy, and this turns out to be one of those. Barber comes up with a neat little lick around the 5-minute mark, and then at about 5:30, Marc latches on to it. Unfortunately, at 11:30, Brownstein is STILL playing the same thing. They’re certainly getting louder and playing more around Marc, but his lack of doing anything interesting here absolutely ruins this jam for me. This feels like a jam that people would lose their minds to at the show, then listen back later and go, “Damn, I thought this was so sick at the time.” Not what I listen to them for. Even after they get out of the repeater, Marc is still sort of stuck on that riff for a little bit. Gross. It’s funny, because this is followed by the last 2 minutes of the track being an ambient jam, which I will pretty much always go crazy for. Barber’s tone here is great; real Middle Eastern vibes. I’m not entirely sure where the “Tractorbeam Jam” starts and ends, but basically the whole track here has a lot of cool stuff going on. I’m not sure I’d call it a “highlight” as much of this feels rehearsed. The rest of the show from here I found to be very throwaway. Jam > Ladies > Shimmy feels like pretty well-worn territory.

Highlights: I-Man, Loose Change*, Shimmy