October 24, 2020

Hope is standard, as is Electric Slinky, though Slinky has a short-ish type 1 jam. The Reactor jam begins with the usual dark trance jamming. After a few minutes they cut the tempo dramatically and develop a lighter, happier sound. This features Magner on some Rhodes, and Barber’s play here is really nice. They move uptempo again, and they keep the happy-go-lucky sound that they’ve been toying around with for a bit. This flows so nicely into Champions that it feels planned. Beautiful stuff. The jam out of Champions is weird. They can’t seem to decide if they’re going to Orch Theme, or Tricycle, or Tempest. Instead, it turns into I Feel Love and…I just…can’t. Please stop playing this song. The last jam is very short and leads almost immediately (and obviously) to Reactor ending. Please don’t play I Feel Love anymore.

Plan B is standard. Pygmy begins with a pretty generic midtempo jam, but leads to some absolutely beautiful playing from the entire band. This is Blissco, baby! I wish Barber’s tone was a little stronger, and he’s way, way back in the mix here, but I guess we can’t get everything we want. The only drawback here is that the great portion of this jam is just a little too short. The first RLH jam has a great four-chord progression from the band. Magner has some great leads here, and I think the jam as a whole is really solid. They botch the re-entry into RLH a bit, but I suppose that’s okay. The second RLH jam turns into a very digital jam featuring Barber on one of his new-ish toys. Even if the arps from Barber are not all that interesting, this is still really cool. They eventually lock into a fantastic groove here that works really well. The jam out of Running Into the Night is really great, and Barber’s tone throughout this jam is wonderful. Frustratingly, they decide they’ll tease I Feel Love again. Ugh. Don intro has both Fanfare for the Common Man and Van Halen teases. The Don jam itself doesn’t do a whole lot for me. They’re at least cohesive here, but I don’t think they ever land on anything all that interesting. The Home Again jam is a long, meandering jam that has a more typical “jamband” vibe to it. This doesn’t do much for me, but some may like it, and it’s not bad.

Highlights: Reactor*, Pygmy, RLH (1, 2), Running*