Mr. Autumn Band

10/2/99, Minneapolis, MN, Target Center

SET 1: Llama, Wolfman's Brother, Punch You in the Eye > Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn), Poor Heart, Roggae, Split Open and Melt, The Squirming Coil > Loving Cup

SET 2: Tweezer > On Your Way Down > Piper > You Enjoy Myself, Frankenstein, Waste

ENCORE: While My Guitar Gently Weeps > Tweezer Reprise

Listen

September is a trash month. Here in the midwest, it can never decide whether it’s summer or fall, so I spend days alternately sweating and shivering if I don’t get my layers just right. I hate football and think it should be illegal, hayfever blows, the kids going back to school is canceled out by my academic job getting insanely busy – it’s an annoying month, the seasonally opposite equivalent to Smarch.

And September Phish shows just feel wrong. I find even the datelines to be aesthetically perverse – 9/14/99? 9/23/00? Disgusting. According to ZZYZX, September sports the third-lowest number of shows historically, trailing only its awful twin March and the vacation month of January. It’s no wonder that I’ve found this tour difficult to connect with; the calendar astrology is all off. 

But October? Yeah man, that’s the stuff. The crisp air, the earlier (but not soul-crushingly early) sunsets, the changing leaves, the ability to wear a hoodie in all social situations – it’s what I wait all year for. And Phish in October feels as warm and comfortable as a favorite cardigan, with indoor shows, midwest dates, and the looming promise of Halloween. And even in a year, like this one, without an actual Halloween show, the spooky season still puts Phish in the right frame of mind.

We got a taste of that autumnal spirit yesterday with its eerie Gumbo, but tonight in the Twin Cities really dives into the pile of leaves. It might just be the lack of new material, but this feels like a show that could have happened in the fall of almost any late 90s year, some sonic tricks aside. If this were 10/2/95 instead of /99, only Roggae and Piper would be anachronistic – though Quinn and On Your Way Down would be pretty big bustouts. A Llama opener, Tweezer starting off the second set, that WMGGW > Tweeprise encore…you can practically smell the pumpkin spice.

It’s Phishcrit policy that too much nostalgia is a dead end, but the band does a nice job in this show of sprinkling just enough ‘99 dust over the old-school setlist. Trey’s Llama solo features judicious use of the reverse-delay pedal, PYITE’s intro incorporates the Heavy Things morse code bleep, a bweeoooo haunts the Melt jam as it grows increasingly violent. They even work in the latest chapter of the year’s nickname gag, featuring the most innocent nickname ever bestowed upon Fishman: Matty?

And the second set, aside from that superfluous Waste, has a pleasing flow. The Tweezer doesn’t go too deep – is it time to say the king of all Phish jam vehicles is kinda having an off year? – but it rides a heavy stomp that lands organically in the sinister haze of On Your Way Down, thanks to some early telegraphing by Mike. Piper gets to be the centerpiece jam of the night, and while it rushes the build so Trey can enter sheets-of-noise mode, it eventually breaks through that wall of sound and comes out the other side in a more restrained, itchy zone that veers very close to a BOAF jam. 

If I may lodge one small complaint, it’s that the Piper jam finishes up in Siket-y territory, but goes for YEM instead. It’s almost as if they’ve forgotten their summer fling with The Siket Disc existed; apart from two early performances of What’s The Use?, their “new album” is completely absent from this tour. Sure a WTU or My Left Toe would’ve disrupted the old-fashioned fall feel of this show, but those are songs that should have thrived as the tour moved into a more traditional indoor autumn run. And it would’ve provided some much needed continuity between summer and winter – after all, fall’s beauty is rooted in gradualism, the leaves slowly changing instead of falling off abruptly in one fell swoop.