Phish

It happens very often that the name Phish gets linked to the glorious effigy of the Grateful Dead, though comparing a recent band (even one only recently disbanded) to one from yesterday is usually the classic stylistic exercise that betrays superficiality. The two bands can be compared for the simple shared attitude of "jamming" live, stretching songs into concert-length expansions that often take on sprawling forms simply due to the "river-like" duration of a single song. Beyond that, the Grateful Dead and Phish speak two different languages.

In the Dead, the propulsive, explosive engine was very often bound up in the guitar persona of leader Jerry Garcia; in Phish, the same role is confined to Trey Anastasio, leader, guitar hero, mastermind and executive arm of the band's music. However, the styles (not only in guitar playing but also in composition) of the two start from different premises, and technically turn out to be even more at odds.

Garcia developed his own "cosmic highways" always as a result of mental trips translated onto the stave, journeys that were very often chaotic, instinctive, and even irrational; at times Garcia communicated with his instrument through languages so intimate as to seem enigmatic even to the most hardened fans, abstract psychic explorations, tender at times and fiery in others, highly figurative melodic threads suggesting wavering profiles never quite the same as themselves, and therefore hardly repeatable from concert to concert.

Anastasio is an instinctive player, yet also a lucid and logical artist who always keeps in view the path his instinct suggests; he lives in muscular phrasing, in the tube-driven power of amplification, and his liquid guitar lines very often need complicity, in the sense that they only become comprehensible and clear in their own physiognomy when supported by the instrumental input of the band's other members.

Technically speaking, Anastasio is far more gifted than Garcia: he has absorbed the dogmas set in stone by the masters of the past, but at the same time he has managed to develop a personal style through the new techniques that emerged over the years, which makes him highly versatile, retro and modern at once.

The Grateful Dead, at the outset, had a clear approach split between Pigpen's blues and Garcia's folk and bluegrass; that divide, in their happiest and most creative era, blossomed into pure, pioneering psychedelia, which was never content to glide over the gentle West Coast ballads favored by other contemporaries, but dug deep in a constant search for the "primordial" sound. Phish turn out to be far less cerebral, but also more imaginative and "lighter".

Anastasio and his bandmates rewrite the entire past and present history of American music in their own way. Their rediscovery of folk focuses on its more artisanal, singer-songwriter-derived strain, both in form and content; the more romantic and baroque English progressive rock crops up here and there in certain compositions; avant-garde free-jazz manages to find room too, often reaching its climax through cacophonous explosions: chaotic soundscapes where, nonetheless, every note has its precise purpose, without indulging in experimental flights to the outer edges of listenability. Latin sonorities are another far from secondary component: a rediscovery of cultures far removed from Vermont that nonetheless always ring true, thanks to a delicate compositional taste and a genuine feel in both writing and performance.

It's not unusual to stumble upon sudden a cappella vocal excursions either, riding the wave of Zappa-esque nonsense. Finally, there's jazz, the more traditional kind, the jazz of the '50s, which fits perfectly well into typically pop, easily accessible melodic frameworks.

All of this, and much more, always reaches its precise fulfillment thanks to the perfect balance of dynamics, wielded with skill by Anastasio, very often in complicity with the other members, namely Mike Gordon on funky bass, Page McConnell on piano and keyboards, and Jon Fishman on drums and percussion.

Ultimately, Phish are a kaleidoscope in which various disciplines coexist, in a multitude of chromatic shades. Rather than being exclusively "acid", as was the case with the Dead - and thus more tied to their own era - Phish honor the past while living fully in the present, in perfect harmony, which keeps their music from ever feeling dated, destined instead to endure and renew itself as time goes by.

All of Phish's early studio albums up to "Hoist" contain, to varying degrees, gems within their tracklists, which find a fuller shape in live performances, which, as is well known, the band loved to stretch and reshape beyond all recognition. In this case, though, we prefer to remember Phish confined within studio walls, unfurling into fine works like "Junta", "Lawn Boy", "Rift", "Hoist" and, indeed, "A Picture of Nectar", which takes flight on the frenzied opening drumming of "Llama". A pure example of the Phish sound, where technical skill coexists with the propulsive heart of emotion without smothering it - a fast funk-rock number split into several parts by keyboard intros that are then torn open by guitar runs both dissonant and lyrical at once. A track with visibly twitching nerves, painting a muscular, crack-free body of sound.

"Eliza" changes the scenery entirely: it's a brief instrumental piece just a minute and a half long, its skyline reflected in the sinuous classical piano forms that bubble up, conveying a wonderful sense of melodic spontaneity. With "Cavern", on the other hand, we return to a setting marked by even more pronounced funky guitar rhythms, while in the background the keyboards punctuate the track's rhythmic pulse and the pleasing central chorus takes shape. "Poor Heart" brings us back to old-school country-western, built on banjo and fast pedal steel, with Gordon's bass keeping a fairly brisk pace.

But it's with "Stash" that the band draws one of its greatest masterpieces: a long instrumental introduction, in which Anastasio reinterprets certain Latin sonorities in his own way through liquid guitar lines that simply "sing" the melody before twisting back on themselves, is followed by a sublime burst of guitar soloing, with visionary lyricism reaching its climax in a cacophonous concentration on the verge of breaking apart.

"Manteca" is nothing more than a tiny introduction that leads us into "Guelah Papyrus", an atypical track lit up by warm, sun-drenched reggae rhythms: the vocals are spirited, and the melody travels within relaxed boundaries, broken however by the central piano solo that changes everything, carrying us into jazz territory, where the piano intertwines and overlaps with the guitar, creating a "web-like" effect that spills over into a dissonant oasis.

"Magilla" is another little gem, underscored by Fishman's elegant brushwork, and above all by McConnell's piano touch, which shifts between jazz scales and other, more typically classical ones, tending to recreate smoky atmospheres with a strong bohemian flavor.

"The Landlady" is another guitar tour de force in which Anastasio references Carlos Santana without false modesty, sliding swiftly across the fretboard on the waves of a Latin melody full of abrupt interruptions and sharp accelerations - ultimately a delight for anyone who loves modal scales and improvisations built upon them.

"Glide" is introduced by a bass that digs deep whirlpools, backed by gloomy piano entrances, while an a cappella choral vocal instills a sense of pastoral calm. "Tweezer", on the other hand, is one of the band's great classics, a track always present in live performances, which with its open-ended arrangements is tailor-made to thrive on the strings of improvisation; it's a syncopated, fragmentary funk, with a melody that spins on itself, repetitive and hypnotic, the vocals a constant back-and-forth of lead and counter-vocals, with Anastasio and Gordon relentlessly steering the same melody before carrying the listener into realms of pure dissonance, with that deliberately cacophonous effect conveying a strong sense of unease.

"The Mango Song" immediately comes across as a sunnier composition, one that's easy to be lulled by in that seemingly graceless choral vocal, which nonetheless conceals nuances that come to the fore in the well-crafted, more melodically catchy chorus - just as well-crafted is the central interlude in which guitar and piano converse with one another, before sending everything back to that deliberately jumbled starting point, all punctuated by the chorus. Ultimately, a classic example of the Phish sound, where everything changes, where nothing is ever quite the same as itself. A continuous evolution and a restlessness that mocks the classic blueprint of the song built on the standard riff-verse-chorus-verse-solo scheme, and so on.

"Chalk Dust Torture" is one of the most immediate tracks in the band's entire catalog: pure rock and roll, driving and frenzied, built on a granite-solid guitar riff and a killer melody; adding the finishing touch is a blistering solo from Anastasio, who literally sodomizes the guitar through high notes stretched to breaking point and a masterful command of feedback.

"Faht", on the other hand, is one of the album's rare weak spots: a brief folk-guitar instrumental, underpinned by a recorded backdrop of ambient sounds. Here Phish venture into territory that doesn't suit them, getting trapped in a melody that's not only elementary but also goes nowhere; ultimately, filler.

"Catapult" is 30 seconds of spoken word that serves to introduce "Tweezer Reprise", an almost entirely instrumental track that's magnificent in its crescendo; a solitary electric arpeggio, then after a few moments the piano begins sketching out the sonic landscape, drums and bass come in together creating a torrential melody and lending a sense of depth, right up to the choral vocals which, like a final explosion, close the album in a genuine burst of fireworks.

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18/03/2007