, attached to 2021-07-28

Review by heathen

heathen Set 1: Sloppy and boring. The new song they debut, I Never Needed You Like This Before, is lame. They play NICU slow, with more of a reggae feel. I hope this isn't going to be a permanent change to the arrangement for that song. I suppose it's expected that they'll need to shake off the cobwebs so it shouldn't be surprising that this set is so mundane.

Set 2/e: DWD starts to get into some interesting territory about halfway in, but Fish isn't really keeping up. He seems to be phoning it in while the other guys are being more adventurous. I hope this turns around, but given his playing in recent years this seems to be the norm for him. Sure enough, Fish plays basically the same pattern for all of this DWD. Sad. Simple is more of the same, but with less energy. This version of the song itself feels slow and understated, and as they go into the jam Fish is once again just laying back on one drum pattern. At least this time he starts to change it up a bit about halfway into the jam, but he doesn't change it much. Again, we've got the other guys charting a course for outer space while Fish is just strolling in the park. He does start to wake up in the last few minutes of the jam though. The transition into Fuego is great, and I'm not even a fan of Fuego. At least it brings the energy up though. Not much to say about the rest of the second set. Sloppy and low energy for the most part. The Slave isn't anything special, but that "oooh ooh ooh" sample that gets dropped several times is absolutely awful. That's something I'd expect to hear coming from Future Man's "drumitar" circa 1996. Say it to me SANTOS is yet another lame song. I'm trying to think of the last time they wrote a song I really enjoy, and I think it hasn't been since Farmhouse (the album, not that song in particular) unfortunately.

It's the first show back in a while so one can't expect too much, so I'm trying to not dwell on this one. There were some good moments (second half of the Simple jam and the transition into Fuego), but overall a sloppy and low energy affair.


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