SET 1: Meat, Maze, Meat Reprise, Ya Mar, Fast Enough for You, The Old Home Place > Wilson > Mike's Song > Simple > Weekapaug Groove
SET 2: Gotta Jibboo, Wolfman's Brother, Run Like an Antelope -> Contact > Sand, Roggae > Prince Caspian > Rocky Top > Cavern
ENCORE: Brian and Robert, Good Times Bad Times
For at least the first three shows of the Japan tour, the venues aren’t as small as I had actually assumed. In Tokyo, the three dates were in rooms that hold 1,300 (On Air East), 3,000 (Zepp Tokyo), and 3,000 again (Hibiya) – definitely smaller than the shed circuit, but in the ballpark of the special Roseland show. It’s after they leave Japan’s capital city that things got really cozy, with the next three nights all under 1,000 paying customers before a return to the Zepp franchise in Osaka bumped them back north of 2,000.
Tonight’s show, in Nagoya, is the smallest of them all, with only 550 people able to squeeze into Club Quattro. By this point in Phish’s trajectory, I’m guessing the backstage guest list was higher than 550 at a typical summer show; on the Chicago venue scale, it’s slightly larger than the Empty Bottle. And it’s one of those tapes where you feel like you can pick out every single one of those 550 attendees, particularly the dopey ones who see the intimate setting as an opportunity to yell “Fuck Your Face” at the band.
Thankfully, they settle down, and you can probably chalk it up to the relaxed mood this show quickly establishes. The Meat Maze Meat sandwich sets the tone; fans can spot the false ending gag from a mile away by this point, but returning for a Meatprise after an onstage chat refreshes the bit. The shared inside-joke dynamic hits its peak in the second set, when the band flirts with Joe Jackson’s “Is She Really Going Out With Him?” between songs and the crowd tries to goad them into playing it in full, even organizing a spontaneous sing-along.
More importantly: for the first time all tour, the band sounds as small as the venues. And I mean that as a compliment. There’s a refreshing delicacy to the playing, not just in the quieter songs like FEFY and Roggae and Brian and Robert, but in normally brash tunes like Weekapaug, Antelope, or Sand. Instead of the current default mode of layering on the effects and getting louder and denser, these jams are skeletal by recent standards, the quartet conversing casually in (mostly) natural tones. Y’all know I’m not averse to Phish’s sonic experiments and ever-evolving sound, but it’s restorative to hear them temporarily sounding like they did in the early 90s, with reduced sugar-high desperation and newer, calmer material.
When they do push the envelope, it’s in the opposite direction of that overwhelming Piper from the second night in Tokyo. Both Ya Mar and Simple take the diminuendo approach, with the former reaching near-silence by the end of its jam. Neither are wildly inventive; they mostly just pull the same trick as Foam used to do back in the day. But it’s like they’re daring the rowdies in the crowd to spoil the meditative mood and to their surprise – to everyone’s surprise – they don’t. If anything sets up the magic that happens the following night, it’s the results of that test.
The combination of stripped-down playing and the band reviving some classic close-listening audience provocation shows that “back to basics” doesn’t necessarily just mean playing the old stuff. It’s not so much about turning back the clock as it is imposing a constraint, and the pure logistics of the Japanese tour are a very tangible limitation – it’s hard for me to imagine Phish even fitting all of their 2000-era gear onto a stage at a 550-cap club. Tonight starts to show why forcing the band into such a tight squeeze was a brilliant stroke of booking after the peak of Big Cypress; Japan was just the team-building retreat they needed. It’s only a shame it didn’t last longer.