AR: Joy

Phish - Joy (2009)

Well, I'd be entirely remiss if I didn't tell you that the best thing about the album Joy is that (2009) attached to its end - it's not that it's cool-dude-buddy-bro-sweet that yo-Phish is back together, it's just that I am unspeakably happy that Phish is back together. If you're not me - and you're not - you'll never have a real appreciation for just how blissful this band can make me, how when I find myself in times of trouble, "Punch You in the Eye" comforts me. The real simple take is that I always heard a sound in my head, a band that played in this mystical, eccentric and varied style. It sounded a specific way and I would seek out music that would even hope to touch that crystalline perfection of what I wanted from a rock band, but there were always only glimpses, hints here and there. And then Liz took me to a show in Houston on 9.25.99, and the band from Vermont just stepped in and *were* that sound - the archetype I had heard forever. And everything about them grabbed my brain and on dark nights intimated that all was okay in times when they most definitely weren't. I'm a far cry from the world's biggest Phish fan - um, that's an understatement - but trust that when I say it's good to have them back, it is the *good* to have them back. Joy, indeed.

This is also the first time that I've caught the music in the order proper. Meaning that the typical way a Phish album gets introduced is that the songs get written in between the tours, maybe the album gets recorded, but then well before it's released the band is out on the road working things out, extending jams, rewriting sections, etc. I joined the Phish game in 1999 after most of 2000's Farmhouse songs had already made their debuts in either '97 or '99, and I had a very paltry live show collection. When Farmhouse came out, all of the songs were brand new to me. The horror that is Round Room came out at the tail end of Phish's "hiatus," so all of those songs were originally heard in that studio version rather than being worked out on the road. Some of 2004's Undermind's songs were aired out in concert before the album's release in 2003, but many weren't (some not even making their in-concert debut until 2009). Regardless, that was the middle of some bad times for Phish's sound - another post's topic, sure - so I was following the band nowhere near as closely. With this album, however, all of the songs were put on display over the two summer tours, and thanks to the power of the internet (and Tuftsmen named Ian), I heard pretty much every second of every concert. So I heard the crackling live versions of all these tunes and had them ingrained in my head well before the disc was officially released yesterday.

I am firmly in the camp, as I'm sure I have mentioned, that values Phish's studio albums. Dad joked last night that the studio albums are "for the record." Wokka wokka wokka. It's nice to have a standardized version, particularly for some of the more intricate / complex songs, and it's doubly, triply nice to have clean, 100% tight and in-tune versions of the ballads and acoustic numbers. But more than anything, in addition to the thrills and energy and ripping seams of live shows, I just love studio albums. For completely different reasons. There's excellence in control, too, in studio tricks, and Phish is a different beast when reined in. Not worse or better, to my ears, just aesthetically different. Not the same vibe, so why compare? I mean, of course, except for the ballads and acoustic numbers, which are clearly better in house. And given that Phish teamed back up with the same engineer / producer from their largely ballad-and-acoustic-driven album Billy Breathes, it would seem that was at least part of the effort here.

Getting to the album: it opens with that rarest of birds, a saccharine poppy ode to friendship that manages to eschew all my cynical, ironic leanings. "Backwards Down the Number Line" is beautifully endearing, the sappiest sing-along number that I will gladly hum along to with pride. I especially love that it's that rare rock song about male friendship - few west of Belle & Sebastian would sing about whispering "in his ear" with a self-assured smile. After all the mayhem that Trey wrought upon himself in the last several years, hearing this sort of earnest, beaming rebirth* is frankly soul-lightening.

* - Now's as good of a time as any to mention that sort of wise sentiment firmly entrenches in a genre that I'd like to dub "SUPER-COOL adult contemporary pop." They are plainly not as ragged and out of control as in years past, and yeah, they're all greying and have kids and are a little weary from all the self-drug-addling. There's a certain focus that this brings that makes them sound austere, stately. I know that's not completely the case - they still, for example, run impromptu dance competitions set to tape-loop effect ambient music in concert (see previous post) - but there's a new graceful age to them, probably that started on the previous album and has really come to a head here. It's a good quality, I do declare.

Next up is a guitar-wailing mid tempo rocker "Stealing Time From the Faulty Plan" which is about angst-ridden as Phish gets. It's allegedly about Trey's state in the aftermath of his sister's death from cancer and his own aforementioned demons. There's some clear catharsis within, and it has a surprising admission of struggle. "Joy" - practically exhibit 1A from my claim that some songs are better on albums than live - follows along the same lines with sentiments of overcoming tragedy and loss. The chorus teeters just on the right side of powerful/cheesy, and part of this is the clarity with which things are delivered - easy to hear the acoustic guitar accents and well-blended vocal harmonies behind it. Great anthemic ballad.

"Sugar Shack" is a Mike number through and through, an offbeat calypso-ish number delivered in only the way Mike TPB can. His nasally falsetto is admittedly strange - nears Weird Al territory sometimes - but the severe quirkiness that accents this otherwise simple number makes it work. And btw, Trey's goofy island lines over the top seal the goofy deal. Very nice that it's followed by another in the large catalog of animal-based Phish songs - "Ocelot" is an easy-going, straight-forward piano rocker accented by more melody echoing screaming leads from Trey. Ends with a nice "Dear Prudence" homage in a fun times bouncy outro. "Kill Devil Falls" is almost an old timey rock n' roll, twist in the dance hall number, a plain effort to fill the floor. Really a workman's rock ditty, this is the type of song that probably could have come from any bar band but gets carried by the weight of the band - they pull a fake ending, and come back with a fade in chorus jam session. Safe fare, sure, but quality.

If a 2009 album can be said to have sides, that closes the first one. Side B fades in with a crunchy electric guitar ambient fade-in to the very bright, crisp "Light." This, possibly to the largest degree on the album, sounds like a recent Trey Anastasio solo number. That means that there's a very full wall-of-band sound that is solidly unified behind a very melodic Trey vocal / guitar lead. It's a decent enough, straightforward number that stops at sounding vaguely pretty - it's obvious that this will (and it did this summer) serve as a sore of simple-container jam vehicle, and these sorts of songs aren't my favorites. At its conclusion, someone says, "Hey Page, where you been?" And Mr. McConnell / Phish proceed to deliver a schmaltzy, completely toss-off piano-blues-hall number called "I Been Around." Trey gives a silly duplicate-the-melody, Auld Lang Syne sorta lead riff. The whole thing is so obviously a dicking around in the studio moment that it's a little embarrassing. Not the album's highlight.

Phish then dons their prog hat in "Time Turns Elastic." This tune was released as a single several months ago, so I was already quite familiar with the multi-part, 13 minute opus that supposedly took some 270 takes to get down. It's been called their "Terrapin Station" which is sort of silly, given that Phish certainly had plenty of multi-part, extended compositions before this one. The Grateful Dead started in 1965 and "TS" came out in 1977, which would have been 1996 in Phish years, so it's not like it's a smart stage-of-career comparison. Maybe it's that the "melody...shelter in the darkness" section (that repeats) has a little bit of that GD drums groove sound, and people are more on that. So perhaps "it sounds like 'Terrapin Station'" is what people are really on about. Regardless, yeah, keep those GD comparisons coming, that helps a lot. Anyways, this song works tremendously better in the course of the album than as a single, which should be shock at all. A prog rock song on an island is just odd, whereas one that pokes out of the back half of an album works just fine. It's not anything like one of my favorite long-composed pieces, though it continues to grow on me. The middle intricate and highly varied sections are more interesting than intriguing... I appreciate their proggy* goodness, but that's about as far as it goes. I will say that the best part of the song does come at the end, which is a solid move, because you can view the long sections as a road to payoff.

* - I realize that if the term "prog" doesn't mean anything to you, then that paragraph is probably entirely meaningless. I don't know if it's really a coherent term - bands from Yes to Rush to Genesis to Ben Folds Five have had it applied - but I generally think of it as multi-passage, very serious, long songs with big album themes and motifs, exhibiting technical brilliance and melodies that won't sit still long enough to be remembered even if they were somewhat catchy. It generally requires some pretty intense, concentrated listening to appreciate (a certain tolerance for talk of dragons helps, too). Some people use it derogatorily; I try not to, but it does tend to evoke a certain absurd self-importance. It's not that I don't dig it - some of my best friends are progs! - but the general anti-casual listening stance makes "TTE" an odd choice for a single, especially given the super-accessible vibe of the rest of the disc.

The album closes with another song of slow-down self-reflection called "20 Years Later." Sparsely toned with trickles of keys and guitar splashes. Pretty safe closer, solid enough, and maybe rescued a little bit by the Beatles-esque psychedelic outro that closes the album. The reflection angle makes a nice bookend to the album, so if you leave it on repeat, you jump from that relatively somber self-mirror back to the bouncy ode to friends. Nice.

In case it's not obvious, Joy belongs to a long list of albums with a great Side A that loses steam on the second half, even with the clear opus of the disc on the B surface. Every second, excepting the Page throwaway number, is solid, though, and the sageness of Phish 3.0 exhibited throughout makes this well worth a spin. Many reviews call this album "safe;" I'll join them, but argue that Phish's safe is sophisticated and results in a whole lot of tight gems whose sound is best served by this studio format. So glad to have them back, glad that the band members themselves have all come to places that permit their coming back, and glad to have another discful of the studio-version of my favorite band. That's right: I'm glad, glad, glad...

(It was either that or a Happy, Happy, Ren & Stimpy Joke. You got off easy).

Status: Recommended (solid)
Nyet's Fave: "Backwards Down the Number Line"