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Rating: Few bands manage to divide like Phish. Some idolize them, and some hate them, considering them incapable of writing memorable melodies or of making good studio albums.
For their part, critics have beautifully ignored them for years, often giving somewhat controversial judgments, raising on shields a boring and lackluster album like Billy Breathes, meanwhile neglecting the fundamental early episodes of their discography. And while they remain, all in all, a cult phenomenon for us, they perform oceanic concerts in the States, turned into real events by their astonishing improvisation ability, which, along with Grateful Dead and Allman Brothers, makes them the greatest jam band in rock music history, a band capable of stretching the same piece live for hours, with always new ideas, going wild dressing up as Mahavishnu Orchestra, Allman Brothers, and Dixie Dregs.
Like the Dead, they have a hardcore fan base (actually "phans"), the Phish-heads, an absolutely unclassifiable and transversal audience that follows them adoringly everywhere and seems to have a great time: more than concerts, Phish's are real parties, in an almost surreal atmosphere for the exaggerated joy that is breathed, among balloons thrown on the audience that will decide where the improvisation will lead depending on the bounce, trampolines and prankish ideas of all kinds.
Framing Phish's sound in a precise genre is a formidable task, but perhaps alongside Ozric Tentacles and Dream Theater they are, for better or worse among the leading renewers of the progressive genre in the '90s. Certainly, the differences between the three bands are enormous, perhaps only comparable for virtuosity: far less muscular and self-referential than Dream Theater, and less psychedelic and electronic than Ozric, Phish is probably the best of the trio, boasting on their part a frightening encyclopedism and a rich harmonic vocabulary that finds worthy rivals only in Frank Zappa, Tom Waits, John Zorn, and very few others (and as with these artists, a single album does not give an exhaustive idea of their possibilities), albeit with a less anarchic attitude, indeed with a cleanliness of sound and refinement in arrangements worthy of Joni Mitchell.
Their spirit is naïve and innocent, far from intellectual temptations, and summarizes the contradictions of a genre born to be "The intellectual genre" par excellence, but which apart from a few enlightened cases has become, on the contrary, the showcase for sterile onanisms, ultimately embodying total disengagement, among dragons, medieval sagas, and increasingly heavy, convoluted, and kitsch arrangements. Phish's music certainly does not hide particular cultural superstructures or messages, it does limit itself to entertaining, but unlike the vast majority of prog groups, it does so with irony, infinite taste, and lightness.
After Junta, a first self-production, which already contains pearls like "Fee", "You Enjoy Myself", and "David Bowie", the four former university colleagues reach their first official chapter, this Lawn Boy, which has on its cover the vacuum cleaner that in concert is played by drummer Jon Fishman, often and willingly dressed as a woman.
The music of the album is hard to describe: delicate and colorful, a swirling kaleidoscope of genres that succeed and overlap continuously, moving with nonchalance from jazz to bluegrass ("My Sweet One"), from boogie to bossa nova to blues seamlessly, as in the splendid "Split Open and Melt", worthy of the baroque fantasies of Zappa and Ponty, where it goes from fusion to funk passing through a crazy celestial choir, or in the equally Zappa-like but less successful "Bathtub Gin".
Trey Anastasio on the guitar demonstrates an unmatched eclecticism (a cross between Duane Allman, Marc Ribot, Pat Metheny, and John McLaughlin), and Page O'Connell is a keyboardist of superb taste, but what amazes most is the cohesion of the group, allowing Phish to conduct even an atonal fugue with surprising grace as in "Reba", the best track of the album, which after a beautiful fusion guitar interlude closes unexpectedly with a march.
Compared to live performances and also to the subsequent Picture of Nectar (the other great studio album of the quartet), the sound is much less masculine, but in this way, pieces like the initial "Squirming Coil" emerge on tiptoe, balancing between jazz and pop, or the enchanted and melancholic melody of "Bouncing Around The Room", an almost minimalist fantasy that closes the album with a smile.
This real rainbow of sounds is a breath of fresh air, nine tracks to set up a very fun and inconclusive laboratory of a thousand musics, and a precious tribute to fans of progressive suites and jams.
A CD that represents Pop in its most beautiful and noble expression: a must-have.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 The Squirming Coil (06:01)
The Squirming Coil of sunset
I keep within my reach
Tried yesterday to get away
and hitchhiked to the beach
I saw Satan on the beach
trying to catch a ray
He wasn't quite the speed of light
and the squirming coil
it got away....
The muscles flex the mother's ring
She fastens children to her king
and sends him down the crooked street
When he returns, the birth's complete
Jimmy holds the Tannis root
The forest's tasty nectar shoot
The sun tips off the monarch's suit
from sequined sash to shiny boot
"I'd like to lick the coil some day
Like Icarus, who had to pay
with melting wax and feathers brown
He tasted it on his way down"
Stun the puppy!
Burn the whale!
Bark a scruff and go to jail!
Forge the coin and lick the stamp!
Little Jimmy's off to camp
02 Reba (12:25)
Reba sink a boulder in the water
Reba tie a cable to a tree
Reba stuck in a game of lipstick perfume flypaper
Reba press a razor to a slide cross a needle with a prune
Knee deep in the motel tub
Reba dangle ladle form her lip
Dip
Sip
Reba babble to the nag with the lipstick perfume
Mutter to a farmer in a truck
Take a peek at the cheetah, reba
Cheetah on the prowl in a cage
Sink a boulder in the water
Tie a cable to a tree
Mutter "nature" to the nag
With the lipstick perfume
Reba flush a fleshfarm leftover
Thunder in a circle
Down the pipes
Bag it
Tag it
Sell it to the butcher in the store
(4 times)
Reba put a stopper in the bottom of the tub
Picked up a jar unscrewed the top
And watched it drop into the water
A little scoop of plaster mix
Some coffee grounds and mud
And then she stirred it with the ladle
That her grandmother had bought her
Threw in a pot of melted wax
A forefoot and a hoof
Apple core, worms galore
And a can of some corrosive
Coconuts and chloroform
Some wicker and some cork
Toxic waste, some purple paste
She hoped was not explosive
Reba dip a ladle for a taste of her creation
And she knew that what she make
Would be the finest in the nation
Bag it
Tag it
Sell it to the butcher at the store
(12 times)
(Instrumental)
Bag it
Tag it
Sell it to the butcher at the store
(12 times)
04 Split Open and Melt (04:43)
In the morning I pack up my gear
and toss it in my carryall
Run the wide load to the lip
and watch the big core crack and glow
In the evening I undo my belt
Split open and melt
I wake up on my stomach
with my face between my hands
and crawl along the floor toward the doorway
Jumping to my feet
I try to put myself together
but I feel it in my knees
and the room begins to spin
and I slip and bump my head and raise a welt
Split open and melt
We breathe deep
in a steam dream
and plunge below the water line
down, down, down
between beams
to the gloom room
among the seaweed and the slime
down, down, down
Melt
06 Bathtub Gin (04:28)
Brett is in the bathtub
making soup for the ambassadors
and I am in the hallway
singing to the troubadours
The kings are all lined up
outside the gate
and the autumn bells are ringing
but they'll just have to wait
Where is the joker?
Have you seen him around
with his three coned cap
that he wears like a crown?
Have you seen his stripped stockings
and heard his sad tale
about the kids under the carpet
and the purple humpbacked whales
Here come the ambassadors
they show up one by one
Brett is tasting all the soup
to see if it is done
Wendy's on the windowsill
waiting to be let in
and we're all in the bathtub now
making bathtub gin
The kings storm the hallway
they've climbed up through the gate
they didn't mean to be impolite
but they just couldn't wait
Here comes the joker
with his silly grin
he carries a martini
made of bathtub gin
Here comes the joker
we all must laugh
cause we're all in this together
and we love to take a bath.
07 Run Like an Antelope (09:51)
Rye, rye, rocco
Marco Esquandolas
And been you to have any spike, man?
Run, run, run, run
Run, run, run, run
Run, run, run, run
Run, run, run, run
Set the gearshift for the high gear of your soul
You've got to run like an antelope out of control
08 Lawn Boy (02:31)
Throughout the night
when there's no direct light
and a thin veil of clouds
keeps the stars out of sight
I can smell the colors
outside on my lawn
the moist green organic
that my feet tread upon
and the black oleander
surrounded by blues
I GET SO OVERWHELMED
by olfactory hues
09 Bouncing Around the Room (03:57)
The woman was a dream I had though rather hard to keep
For when my eyes were watching hers,
they closed, and I was still asleep
For when my hand was holding hers,
she whispered words and I awoke
And faintly bouncing around the room the echo of whomever spoke
I awoke and faintly bouncing round the room,
the echo of whomever spoke
The place I saw was far beneath the surface of the sea
My sight was poor but I was sure the sirens sang their songs for me
They dance above me as I sink I see them through a crystal haze
And in a sweet sound bouncing round the never ending coral maze
That time then and once again I'm bouncing around the room
10 Fee (05:23)
In the cool shade of the banana tree
On the rugged trail toward the balcony
A child of the twentieth century
A dried up Goliath and a weasel named Fee
Far away in another place
A fading beauty named Milly Grace
A gospel singer with pox on her face
And a bamboo cane to help her keep the pace
Fee was a Buddhist prodigy
Long past the age of maturity
Someday he knew it would set him free
Like it did for Floyd, the chimpanzee
Whoa, Fee
You're trying to live a life that's completely free
You're racing with the wind, you're flirting with death
So have a cup of coffee and catch your breath
Fee first met Milly in a bar in Peru
His heart was jumping like a kangaroo
Like a beast in a cage in an old Dutch zoo
It was hopping and jumpin' in wooden shoes
But Floyd was jealous and alone
He wanted Milly for his own
A desperate craving in his bones
"Their love," he said, "I will not condone"
Then one day on a ship to Quebec,
Floyd found Fee and Milly on a lover's trek
He picked up a bottle and broke off the neck
It sliced through the air, and Fee hit the deck
Whoa, Fee
You're trying to live a life that's completely free
You want to stay with Milly until you're dead
But you just got a bottle upside the head
Milly turned and began to scream at Floyd
She said, "You think you're pretty mean"
And though she was as thin as a small string bean
She slammed him in the face with a nectarine
Floyd fell back over the edge of the ship
'Till he hung from the rail by his fingertip
Milly said, "Floyd, I'll make you lose your grip,
With this tiny piece of paper I can make you slip"
So Milly took that paper and did the deed
Floyd hit the water with astonishing speed
And as the sharks circled in and began to feed
Milly knew her weasel was finally freed
Whoa, Fee
You're trying to live a life that's completely free
Floyd is dead, he's nothing but a ripple
'Cause Milly took that paper and sliced him on the nipple
Whoa, Fee
You're trying to live a life that's completely free
You're racing with the wind, you're flirting with death
So have a cup of coffee and catch your breath
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