Phish have lengthy been one thing of a unicorn within the material of fashionable music. Working largely outdoors the standard framework of the business, the Vermont four-piece has change into one of many world’s highest-grossing touring acts and not using a single mainstream hit or a platinum-selling album, constantly promoting out stadiums and amphitheaters throughout the US for many years. Their extraordinary industrial success, constructed virtually fully on the power of their reside performances and anything-can-happen ethos, stands as a testomony to the loyalty and dedication of their fanbase.
Whereas they’ve performed outdoors the US sparingly over time – a few excursions of Europe and Japan, even warming up the Pyramid Stage for that Prodigy set at Glastonbury – Phish stay a uniquely American phenomenon. Nowhere is that extra palpable than at Madison Sq. Backyard, which has change into hallowed floor for the band and their itinerant followers. Since their apotheotic first New 12 months’s Eve outing there in 1995, by means of the Baker’s Dozen sequence in 2017 – a 13-night elaborately themed residency that includes 237 songs with no repeats – their multi-night runs on the midtown Manhattan landmark have change into a cherished ritual for his or her devoted neighborhood. On Tuesday night time, the band returned to their non secular dwelling floor for the fourth present of a four-night New 12 months’s Eve run (and 87th efficiency at MSG total), delivering a marathon efficiency over three sprawling units that underscored why they continue to be the standard-bearers of improvisational rock greater than 40 years into their profession.
Coming into the sector feels much less like attending a typical rock live performance and extra like getting into a brief autonomous zone of pleasure and spontaneity. Followers in tie-dyed shirts and glittering New 12 months’s Eve regalia lined the concourses, many clutching limited-edition posters or evaluating notes on the earlier three evenings. Phish fandom thrives on the unpredictable – the setlist adjustments each night time and followers know they’ll by no means hear the identical present twice – and the group buzzed with hypothesis about what songs may emerge. The self-esteem owes untold money owed to the Grateful Lifeless, however Phish’s personal longevity since their 1983 formation on the College of Vermont has seen them create their very own lane and maintain their success throughout generations of followers.
The night time started with a primary set that leaned into the band’s capability to stability tightly composed classics with freewheeling jams. Opening with Mike’s Track into Bouncing Across the Room and Weekapaug Groove, the gamers instantly locked right into a groove across the lead guitar of Trey Anastasio, the band’s endlessly smiling guitarist and de facto frontman, who turned 60 in September. Stash featured a snippet of the Allman Brothers’ In Reminiscence of Elizabeth Reed, drawing roars from the realizing crowd. Break up Open and Soften introduced the primary prolonged improvisational deep dive of the night time, a 13-minute exploration that blurred the traces between dissonance and catharsis. Closing with the emotive The Squirming Coil, with Web page McConnell’s delicate piano solo leaving the group in hushed awe, the bar was set excessive for the remainder of the night.
The second set showcased Phish’s mastery of dynamics, opening with Sigma Oasis, a buoyant anthem of optimism, earlier than transitioning right into a sinister My Buddy, My Buddy. The centerpiece was a seamless run by means of a canopy of TV on the Radio’s music Golden Age, the hauntingly minimalist What’s the Use?, and the intricate interaction of Style, the place Jon Fishman’s drumbeats locked tightly with Mike Gordon’s basslines, and McConnell’s twinkling piano thrives added colour to Anastasio’s spiraling solos. The closing sequence of the 80s-era favourite Golgi Equipment and the rollicking First Tube had been pure enviornment rock, capping off a close to flawless hour of music that balanced introspection with unrestrained vitality.
But it surely was the third set the place Phish actually demonstrated why their New 12 months’s Eve reveals have change into the stuff of legend. Rising in matching blue jumpsuits – with the drummer in his customary doughnut-patterned muumuu – the band signaled that the midnight gag, a convention followers eagerly anticipate every year, was about to unfold. The set opened with Character Zero earlier than the band debuted the brand new music Pillow Jets. Because the music constructed, the visible spectacle took heart stage: glowing coils that had hovered above the group all night time started to descend, accompanied by screens displaying surreal, kaleidoscopic imagery. A fractured face sculpture slowly lowered from the ceiling, whereas dancers in flowing yellow robes, dubbed “conjurors of thunder”, carried out an otherworldly choreography.
Because the countdown to midnight reached its climax, the face got here collectively, the dancers shed their robes to disclose glowing, rave-ready equipment, and the band launched right into a euphoric rendition of Auld Lang Syne because the confetti fell. From there, the set exploded into What’s Going By means of Your Thoughts, which integrated parts of EDM – a rarity for Phish – threading in bits of songs like Blaze On, Martian Monster and The Lizards. The wedding of Gordon’s edifice-shaking bass bombs with Anastasio’s towering melodic riffs in Slave to the Visitors Gentle, enhanced by the lighting director Chris Kuroda’s professional work on one of the complicated rigs within the enterprise, lifted the group to a state of grace. After a barbershop quartet-style rendition of Grind to start out the encore, Phish closed with Tweezer Reprise, a dependable barnburner that despatched the group right into a frenzy. Its anthemic riff, repeated and amplified, dropped the curtain on 4 nights of musical virtuosity, absurdist theatre and pure communal pleasure at 1am sharp.
From cultivating a secret language by means of call-and-response moments, embracing glowstick wars and different spontaneous phenomena, to taking part in chess with the group over a whole tour, Phish have constantly redefined what it means to attach with an viewers. In what’s turning into an extended lifetime of seeing reside music, the one different place I’ve witnessed the identical stage of fan devotion – unbridled pleasure, deep viewers participation, followers seemingly having out-of-body experiences wherever you look – was on the Eras Tour. And as with Taylor, that it’s not for everybody goes with out saying. Todd Phillips’ glorious 2000 documentary on the band contains a scene the place Anastasio confronts a destructive evaluation from Leisure Weekly: “Phish may urinate in its followers’ ears and inform them it’s music. The followers in flip could be there with tape recorders to seize the second.” Then and now, there’s not an even bigger YMMV proposition in pop music. For the uninitiated, the byzantine compositions and limitless jams, inside jokes and ocean-deep lore can appear impenetrable, however for these within the know, it’s a journey like no different.
The night time was a fruits of a busy 2024 for the group. Their four-night run on the Vegas Sphere in April, which drew uncommon mainstream consideration and widespread essential acclaim, was one of many hottest tickets of the 12 months. They launched their sixteenth studio album, Evolve, doing NPR’s Tiny Desk and the late-night circuit they usually bypass. A 26-date summer season tour was one of many 12 months’s highest-grossing and their four-day tenting competition, their eleventh, drew roughly 50,000 followers to a Nascar observe in coastal Delaware. However there’s no place fairly like dwelling – and Tuesday’s victory lap inside their friendliest confines managed to construct on their wealthy custom of turning the 12 months’s last hours into one thing transcendent.
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