I am gonna get critical, like it or not. Feel free to thumbs down and dislike, but I’ve always been a firm believer in sharing constructive feedback as opposed to gladhanding mediocrity.

Disjointed at best is how I felt being ushered out of MSG into the warm breath of mid town. The fragmented second set, while wholly enjoyable in some morsel size sections, did not carry with it a continuous thread…though it was a humblebrag in nimbleness from the band, weaving a tweezer through the colors in the void.

The reverse show ensues with a Loving Cup opener and while I love the “keeping me on my toes” mentality I think there is a point when you just want phish like you ordered it, as the 7th course of a gourmet meal, slightly funky, fully marinated, and with a plinko (yes plinko) crust that flakes off with the skin. I’d pair it with a Pinot noir or some shit, smell the cork and pretend I knew what I was doing. I mean I paid good money for this. Lol!

Standard good loving cup, maybe hoping to stoke the embers left by the last week of shows to ignite this fire early but the coal runs out and knowing they dropped Bowie already and weren’t in a place to repeat (I mean a repeat would have been a left field sort of caught off guard thing) Maze came in the two slot. Standard average and succinct if not short Maze, it was like they were easing in to a marathon when we already did 25 miles.

Out of the msg cloud comes the funk and Martian Monster is like this glimmer from the heavens, flying saucer style, reflection of the previous night’s super moon still gleaning off it. I see Kang and Kodos grooving octopus style in their hippie attire and am ready to get up to get down. It was six minutes in heaven and when I got there, was left to float on a cloud for the opening riff of divided sky. A cleanly played divided sky is like phish porn at its finest, the high production value kind, and this was IT. Clean, patient, with what felt like an extended silence, the garden bouncing at 7 beats per second and I am seeing, nay feeling, a flow build to elysium.

So when Caspian drops I say, oh dear prince, let’s now take this ship for spin to the edge of the sky, let the song dissolve and show us what men should fear from the deep abyss of the unknown. And so it is, veering from the song proper with some growls and groans from the belly of the garden, and myth meets modern day with some (as I wrote in the moment) electro funk space mix, digitized goodness that deconstructs into fragmented pieces to be injected by the listener and to flow directly into the blood stream. It was like dial up meets ai robot machine learning faster than Neo in the matrix. Then a subtle break from the electric mayhem with a white light peak of a type II’ish major key jamming, boom, back into the nether regions of the alien AI flying saucer control module. Really soaking in this halcyon anti-groove and hold my breath as the deconstruction is reconstructed as NICU.

NICU, fun, meh. Steam, fun, yeah, middle jam doesn’t get artificially intelligent snd so pales in comparison to the Caspian gone plaid. Oh, but do I hear a reggae beat coming through the speakers, makisupa to close the set, NOPE. A solid l, if not tangential version, bringing the sea of folks swimming in this fish bowl to another white light communal hug of a sing along. Hey, I was singing and swaying too.

77 minutes in and we saw elevation and valley, energy level high, cohesion a b plus if I’m generous. But set break emotions are purely positive, the dopamine hits of Tweezer fueled anticipation firing across the sky bridge like synapses. Everybody buzzing, Tweezer Tweezer Tweezer like a fly toying with the zapper.

30 minutes (on the dot) later and Set Your Soul Free opens set two, continuing the love fest that is the last night of tour. I am in full on norepinephrine mode, staying focused to the here and now knowing we could be achieving lift off again, or taking the service elevator to the basement of the garden (where i hear it is like a swampy bog). The less than inspired romp through the sections of SYSF is a far cry from the previous nights set two setbreak rust shedding openers, it’s a straight up tease in that it doesn’t do much in the 9 plus minutes that it owns the stage but then the waiting does pay off with the iconic Tweezer opening. Buh, buh, wait, we are just gonna, why didn’t we just start here and infuse the Tweezer with 9 additional minutes of heaven (or hell).

Forgetting what I was complaining about, the warm embrace and taffy pull out of uncle ebenezer and it feels like Trey is being present and trying to hold back setting course straight back to white light major key blisstopia, let’s Mike lead with the bass and as whole band interplay ensues, Vultron is formed and ready to battle.

About 7 minutes into this blistering maelstrom and I look up from my deep in prayer contemplative dance groove, think the Virgin Mary meets Lil dicky, out comes my pad as I go Thinking Man, full squint tryin to discern the muffled lyrics being sung far from the mic. Oh boy, it only took me forever to hear Guy Forget, and I do think they were in this “song” for much longer than most realize because we were still trying to sync back with time. Trey bending his way out of power tweezer, semi spacey, into this ultra rare bust out. We all know who the ghost really is, now get back to it…I squint and grimace slightly as a i half laugh cause all I really want is a hard left back to the galaxies version of the EAC, the band acquiesces and for the next 23 minutes we get a jam that fuses many of the metallic jungle alien ai themes that were mined from the ether. Mike really coming through to hold shit together and when I try to double click on the base lines, I hear just tantric rhythms echoing from Fish (or Fosh as he was called tonight).

Then the ungluing. The dissolving of joints. What’s the Use is a beautiful runway to land the flying saucer as it reenters the stratosphere. A longer build is what I heard, time bending a little or turning elastic (yikes, my bad) and the laser effect that rises, I think, from Page’s synths or the boggy innards of the garden takes dead sim at my soul and I am thinking, I get it l, set my soul free. I could have ridden these laser beam effects into the Manhattan night and back up north to my warm bed.

Cue the biggest tease. Fucking SaSS, perfect name, my eyes feel like they are rolling in the back of my head. Nailed opening section, spectral colors in the void, loving the shared moment as we descend from the subtle sounds and who knows what could happen, but this should shape up to be a nice little Saturday. Nimble stick and move, sting and sooth, slip back into Tweezer. Let’s SaSS and Tweeze our way to the finish line, just a neck and neck race to the finish. NOPE.

Lovefest central. The oxytocin is coursing through the floorboards, captured in anything that conducts and Kuroda’s rig gets hijacked and starts a care bear stare of straight ghost buster slime, yup I went there. Everything is Right, but i oh so don’t want it to be. I want to be under my seat in a fetal position thinking the second coming is alien Egyptians. I want that Terminator type apocalypse calypso soundtrack. And for shits and giggles Trey reminds me that he could play a funkafied Manteca, but it only gets a note, a quick shout out before, yes yes yes, big u turn back into Tweezer, oh wait. That’s right, love fest. Number Line. I have seen the writing on the wall, I am gonna sway and sing and high five and hug right into the Tweeprise.

High intensity is an understatement but I would say it was a 60 40 split the majority going to the crowd that embibed the good vibes and fed off the collective energy. Can we bottle it and sell it as renewable energy?

What lovefest is complete with out the original love fest anthem. Swap out Hood for Love and you can feel good feel good good about love.

I want to end on this note. Of the two sections I split time between tonight, strangers at one and friends at the other, the collective vibe was exhilarating. Positivity abounded and the glow was infectious. I had a good time, what Phish show isn’t a party, but I left, as I said earlier, more hungry than when I walked in, disjointed and I guess that is okay, cause I want to come back in search of whatever it is that I think I am looking for, even if I don’t find it, it’s worthy of the search.