October 18, 2020

As much as I adore Rivers, this is just an okay version. Basically none of Jigsaw does much for me either. Also, if you’re having a 7-minute long drum solo, I’m going to be very bored for 7 minutes. The first AC2B jam never really departs from the AC2B cadence. Meh. The also have a second and very short third jam, both of which manage to basically say nothing. The Spaga intro is apparently a Van Halen tease, which I am not familiar with, but it’s gorgeous. First jam begins with some great phrasing and melodic work from Magner. I’m not typically a fan of their DNB jams, but this one is generally well done. Even the second jam here is pretty decent. I think they have a tendency to stick a little too rigidly to the type 1 jam in these Spaga 2 jams, but here they let themselves stretch their legs a bit, and it works. Shocking! This develops into a rather pleasant, Magner-led jam.

The SITA section departs from the usual two-chord vamp into exploratory territory quickly, which is a nice change. This develops into a solid uptempo jam before the somewhat uneven drop into KOTW. The KOTW jam has a 4-chord jam for a minute or two that feels like they might be building something really neat, but they drop it quickly for a one-chord vamp. Meh. The WLTP jam begins with an abundance of arps from both Barber and Magner, along with some weird glitchy stuff that sounds pretty neat. They drop this quicker than I’d like. This turns into a fantastic digital jam. Barber ditches the guitar for most of this, and he pulls it off phenomenally. Morph has a huge Rivers tease from Barber, Magner, and Brownstein, but is otherwise forgettable. 42 has a 2-minute jam, which is an insulting way to end the show.

Highlights: Spaga (1, 2*), Astronaut (1), WLTP*