It’s hard to make any argument whatsoever that Phish ever “mattered.” The band’s best work was the plus-10-minute jam with no real lyrics, just an absurdist refrain.
You gotta run like an antelope out of control!
David Bowie! You be 40!
They were an oddity in those heady days of the early '90s.While alternative music boomed, Phish was a goofy throwback – A forerunner of the '90s jam band blitz that mixed its Grateful Dead with equal doses of Zappa and Weather Report.
The band shied away from song craft. In fact, many early lyrics were contributed by a guy named The Dude of Life (AKA Steve Pollak, now a New York school teacher). But still, those early albums were neat. Junta, Lawn Boy and A Picture of Nectar were great fun. Phish was a group of four musicians that could stretch out as well as the best, electrified jazz quartet you could imagine. They pushed their skills to the limit, and the result was exciting.
The band first poked a big stick in the eye of all that diversion with 1994's Hoist. The cover art for that album was appropriately of a racehorse that had apparently been swiped off its feet in some kind of large, leather sling. The album reduced Phish to playing out of its element in a pastiche of classic rock conventions – there were ballads and up-tempo rockers. It sounded as though Eric Clapton were trying to pace a studio funk band that didn’t believe in the material.
Since then, it has been all downhill for Phish (artistically, anyway. The Hoist gambit paid off with an expanded fan base and an exhausting tour schedule that matched the Dead in nearly every way, especially the way that made its members a lot of money.). When the band broke up about five years ago, it seemed the music-listening public might get a break, but Phish “front man” Trey Anastasio got even more intolerable. He recorded an album of even more middling material, played with David Matthews and was busted for drugs and driving under the influence.
So maybe a Phish reunion wouldn’t be so bad? (It couldn’t be worse!)
Well Joy, Phish’s first studio album since 2004’s Undermind is anything but. Still operating in the self-imposed confines of the pop song structure, and the result is the same stifling soup of mediocrity in which the band has swum since ‘94’s Hoist.
The songs run the same tired courses. There's plenty of great Trey Anastoasio guitar tone (it is a beautiful thing) as he soars through one solo after another. There are piano flourishes, great drumming and lead bass playing. But none of it is exciting. In fact, the song "Ocelot," a limping reggae number is pretty offensive. It doesn't help that Anastasio can not sing.
Why Phish -- though I guess Anastasio is largely to blame here – feel they need to work in the salt mines of pop song craft is a real mystery. Is it that important to have songs that matter? And if so, wouldn’t they be better off sticking to the absurd? Frank Zappa is great, but he’s not known from his great pop song craft.
The structure makes them sound decrepit. Younger indie bands experimenting with the pop form, like Grizzly Bear, make Phish sound 100 years old.
So please, Phish, stop trying to write songs. Jam. Drop acid. Get your mojo back. We don’t need another tired , Gen-X pseudo classic rock act (Wilco’s right behind you and gaining). Leave the lounge act to Billy Joel.
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