Wake Up Call

6/28/00, Holmdel, NJ, PNC Bank Arts Center

SET 1: Chalk Dust Torture, The Sloth, Taste, Bathtub Gin, Piper, If I Could

SET 2: Down with Disease > Harry Hood > Gotta Jibboo > When the Circus Comes > Mike's Song, Albuquerque > Weekapaug Groove

ENCORE: First Tube > Loving Cup

Listen

After so many years of essayin’, it’s nice to get the occasional confirmation that I do kinda know what I’m talking about. Three days ago, I diagnosed Phish with a severe case of the sleepies, and went on to speculate that this was the moment of collective exhaustion where they decided to take their hiatus. After a 72-hour break where they only had to play three minutes of music, Phish comes back to the stage in Jersey a totally renewed band from note one. The rest did this middle-aged band good, and maybe – just maybe – the knowledge that a break was coming in three months’ time inspired a serious second wind.

After playing some of the worst solos I’ve ever heard him play in Raleigh, Trey absolutely tears into Chalk Dust and Taste, not just with technical flash but with the inventiveness that was lacking at Walnut Creek. CDT erupts into spaceship hull breach alarm klaxons, while his Taste solo is grace over power, darting artfully around the song’s winding path and resisting any of the song’s routine licks. After that, they play yet another excellent first set Gin that revisits the EDM-but-not jamming I talked about for the Atlanta Tweezer, this time over an even more disco-based groove, threading in an extended “San-Ho-Zay” jam.

But when they drop into a typically 2000-style overdriven Piper for the fifth song of the night, I start to worry about an overcorrection. You don’t want to squander the fruits of a rare mid-tour, three-day break right away, right? When they abruptly end the set after yet another gorgeous solo in If I Could, it seems like they might have already emptied the tank.

Thankfully, it’s a feint, or possibly some form of bathroom emergency (we’ve all been there). They come back out at top speed, and the Disease > Hood segment feels like they’re trying to speedrun a full set’s narrative arc in just 30 minutes. Disease – precisely the song they would play to celebrate a hiatus decision, just sayin’ – blazes brightly, before Hood eases off, thanks to some glowstick hijinks forcing Trey to take a deep breath.

And unlike set one, they find additional places to take their foot off the gas. The mellower Jibboo is a lightly jammy breather, When The Circus Comes a moment of introspection. After a menacing Mike’s Song with a well-placed pause, I love the use of Albuquerque as an alternative to Hydrogen – it’s an especially quiet, frail version, a mood twist set up brilliantly by the intensity of the preceding jam and the first false ending. It brings the energy down so low, even the band doesn’t catch on right away when Trey starts playing Weekapaug, leaving him playing the rhythm part in isolation for 20 seconds – it sounds startlingly similar to the Doobie Brothers. It all leaves enough in reserve for a top-notch First Tube in the encore, though tacking on Loving Cup as well has me fretting again about load management.

It’s a terrific show, set up for success by how deflated the last one felt. But it also unabashedly uses energy to paper over some of the band’s ongoing challenges. There’s not a lick of Japan flavor in this show, no new or recent vintage songs breaking out into new maturity, no summer festival they’re building towards. A crowd-pleasing setlist and a whole lot of musical pyrotechnics is enough for Phish to bust an early-tour slump, but not a sustainable strategy for a tour that still has three weeks to go. It’s a marathon after all, even if you sometimes need a sprint to shake off the cobwebs.