January 04, 2020

7-11 > Rivers > 7-11 > Boop > 7-11 is one of those segments that looks a lot better on paper than it really is. I didn’t find a whole lot here particularly great. The first 7-11 jam is a very short type 1 jam into Rivers. I love Rivers, and I always wished they’d have turned that song into a monster. The chord progression for the peak is basically the perfect progression for the Biscuits to jam into, so I don’t know why they never gave it more love. With that said, this jam is pretty much just meandering until they get to the Rivers peak. The jam out of Rivers back into 7-11 middle is too short, and too uninteresting. Barber throws out a couple fun teases here and there (Rock Candy and Sabre Dance). The 7-11 trance jam is certainly fast, but it’s aimless. Boop back into 7-11 is better, but not by much. Miracles has a great major key jam that I liked a lot. Confrontation has a decent jam, but they get stuck in a repeater thing for a couple minutes and I lose interest. Vassillios doesn’t do anything for me, but I’ve actually started to like Anthem a lot. I think it’d work better as the peak for a full song, as opposed to just a peak, but I suppose anything that gives them an excuse to do more improv is fine by me. Neither the Anthem jam, nor the Waves jam is anything more than filler. While I don’t care for the Tractorbeam Jam itself (or the jam out), I am fine with the Tractorbeam Jam if only for the fact that they keep doing this ambient jam beforehand. I thought the Abyss jam had some potential, but was fairly short (about 5 minutes). Not long enough to really develop. 4th of July is a throwaway here. The ATW jam gets so damn beautiful. Barber with soaring, guitar riffs during the jam pre-Sabre Dance is straight-up Blissco. Glorious. Story > Station > Story is forgettable.

Highlights: Miracles*, Ambient Pre-Tractorbeam Jam, Above the Waves**