@waxbanks said

Again - I think I'm not really addressing your point. But maybe that's my point: I can't.

'Fraid that doesn't really cut the mustard, bub.

I get it. You're older now, they're older now. You've lived a bit longer, a bit harder, brought new life into this world, relationships have come and gone, couches turned to sofas and a mortgage replaces midterms. All these things I understand. The music, accompanied by a few whimsical and stirring quotes from band members along with Trey's (appreciated) sobriety, these are grown-up times, Obama times, everybody more mature and wizened from life's hard knock lessons.

Here's the thing: the music doesn't reflect that.

Sorry. It just doesn't. And this is where we'll probably have to part ways. Every single time I concede to listening to one of the new tunes I have to turn it off halfway through. People on this board talking about Brent's "cheesiness?" There's a difference between "writing about what you know" and "writing about what you know WELL."

You can't disregard musical composition just because you're now committed to writing about more serious themes!

Let me break that down a bit: if you're going to write a three minute pop song, it damn well better have a hook. I'VE NEVER HEARD A SINGLE HOOK from Trey's recent offerings. On the contrary: if you're going to write a prop-rock epic, it better have all the trappings of that genre as well as a cohesive vision and vehicle for the emotional message of the song. Successful example? Fluffhead. Failed example? Time Turns Elastic. One feels like a seamless suite of passages, the other a pastiche of trite proggy cliches.

Look, I'm not some grizzled vet (ok, maybe a little) who won't listen to anything past 1995. Quite the contrary. But I want to point out that Phish has been doing dark and road-weary for longer than you think, Wally. Look at the insert photos on the back of Billy Breathes. Trey looks like he's been up for three days. Everyone grew weird beards. And they put Billy Breathes, arguably their finest (and most emotionally resonant) moment on tape. Trey even talks about it in the Believer interview.

On the song “Billy Breathes there’s a guitar solo I like a lot. That’s a composed solo. I didn’t labor over it. What I did is, I walked around the kitchen—my daughter had just been born and we were living out in the woods in Vermont. I was in my union suit, chopping wood. I was not thinking about anything, and then I just started singing [sings melody] the first four notes of the solo. I had a cassette player and I’d run over and get it recorded. Then I’d forget about it. And then the next part came. It was a lot of wearing headphones while walking around. Cassette player in my pocket. Change a diaper, go to the store, and whenever I can disconnect from whoever I’m talking to in the room, I’d put on my headphones. So the point I’m making is that it still felt like improv.

He's talking about composition vs improvisation but it hits right where you're hollering from. A guy with new priorities finding ways to fit music into his present tense life. I don't think because they no longer relate to the Golgi Apparatus lyrically, the music should be tedius or trite. David Byrne has been cranking out album after album of wonderfully diverse pop nuggets, all dealing with rather adult themes, and he shows no sign of slowing down. The music is vibrant, danceable, and full of hooks taboot.

You say

I can't see the old stuff the way I used to. I can't get past a feeling I have. And I needn't give any of it up, anything that's ever been, to feel as truly as I've ever felt anything that something new, everything new, is yet to come. A new category of thing.

I say I can't see past the new stuff. The Phish I grew up with and traveled with and went through some heavy shit with was singularly capable (I don't know of any other band that could do this, except maybe Ween, maybe Super Furry Animals) of taking something "juvenile" or "immature" and invoking it (investing IN it) with a supernatural/supercharged/hyperbolic ETHOS. Not pathos, mind you, but something that felt divested of whatever earlier signifiers had marked it as jokey, or fun, or light, and that same thing now becomes dark, and twisted, and full of black magic.

This double-edged sword of signification (the fun is now funhouse, the joke is now on you, pyschonaut) is what makes Phish, well, Phish. When I hear them now, these older bifurcations have been stripped away, the fun songs now just fun, the heavy songs plodding their plotted course towards a (raise your arms and sign along) climax. It's all been dumbed down a bit, partly to ease the struggling musician's aging fingers but mostly because of things like energy, mood, drive, and appetite. It's all different. I respect it, but it's not for me.