What a stand. What a band.
Closing a 25-show summer tour on Sunday at , sealed summer 2013 as the pinnacle of the Vermont quartetap 30-year history. Following a roaring Saturday rippling with revived bustouts, new songs and a debut, Phish came out Sunday swinging hard. For a second consecutive night the band sold out the venue, with a capacity crowd eager to see Phish cap yet another legendary Labor Day weekend on Commerce City’s sticky soccer pitch.
“A Song I Heard the Ocean Sing,” opened the show for the first time in nine years. Keyman Page McConnell led the band into lush landscapes in “Itap Ice,” fueling a reggae-tinged boogie. Keeping with the trend of blowing up first sets, the band closed the
12-song first set with a fiery “David Bowie,” with guitarist Trey Anastasio slinking into frenzied, double-time peaks.
After Saturday’s mind-bending second set, it seemed unlikely that Phish would even follow the same full-blown tack, taking each song as deep as possible before galloping into the next. “Carini” quickly crushed that assumption.
The shadowy jams – layered atop drummer Jon Fishman’s relentless polyrhythmic beats – of “Carini” typically imbue a dark vibe on the show, but the band veered away from the E-minor chord progression to a more uplifting major chord alignment, giving the song a more buoyant feel. “Birds of a Feather” followed with both McConnell and Anastastio sharing their own improvised, uptempo leads. For a second night, Anastasio was animated, bouncing around his spot with a martial artistap fervor. He was effusive in “Golden Age,” the cover of TV On the Radio’s beautiful, reflective song that has taken on new meaning as Phish reaches what many consider the band’s own golden age.
Bassist Mike Gordon, a thunderous force on Sunday, took the reigns halfway through the final set, prodding his longtime pals through a speedy “Piper,” which featured a fun new ploy that has Anastasio and Fishman working a stuttering groove that culled massive “Woo” calls from the crowd. The woo chants emerged on the West Coast earlier this tour and they thrilled Anastasio on Sunday, whose aerobic playing soared as 25,000 answered his beckon with a howling, unified “woo!”
“Mike’s Song” saw Gordon slap-thump-pluck his bass through a roiling party that led into the third night in a row of Phish busting out a debut cover. Peter Tosh’s “Legalize It,” with McConnell improvising a “some call it sour diesel” riff, fit well but musically and figuratively, with a massive cloud billowing from the field as the song reached its lazy apex. “Legalize It” spilled into “Weekapaug Groove,” before Anastasio led a reflective “Show of Life,” with the line “I see face of the friends that I recall. I’d like to take this time to thank you all,” resonating with sincerity. Phish seemed truly stoked on Sunday.
Anastasio didn’t leave anyone guessing on the band’s spirits with a gushing moment praising fans and hoping they had “even an iota of the fun we had this summer” after an exceptionally rowdy “Suzy Greenberg.”
Setlist:
Set One
A Song I Heard the Ocean Sing
Kill Devil Falls
Back on the Train>
Rift
Meat>
Itap Ice>
Guelah Papyrus
Divided Sky
Funky Bitch
Cavern
Stealing Time From the Faulty Plan>
David Bowie
Set 2:
Carini>
Birds of a Feather
Golden Age>
Prince Caspian>
Piper>
Boogie on Reggae Woman>
Saw It Again>
Mike’s Song>
Legalize It>
Weekapaug Groove
Show of Life>
Suzy Greenberg
Encore:
Character Zero
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Jason Blevins is a strange dancer, but that has never stopped him.
Dylan Langille is a Fort Collins-based photographer and a regular contributor to Reverb. See more of his
