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Phish
Round Room
label: Elektra / Asylum
released: 12.10.02
our score: 4.0 out of 5.0
buy it: here
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After a two
year “hiatus” the Vermont-based quartet Phish quietly
ramble back into town -- and they’re still up to their old
tricks. One might think that the post-9/11 world might alter their
message and presentation, but Phish continues to make personal,
improvisational music that try as it might, is a good ponds’-length
from mainstream.
Phish’s
new release, Round Room, is a loosely textured, often
beautiful rock album. Contrasting other Phish studio albums which
have often been critized for lacking the live feeling of their
concert performances, the nearly 80 minute “Round Room”
was recorded in four days after just a couple weeks of rehearsal
following their break from all things Phish. The songs have a
rough feel that are so lacking in pretension and packaging, they
often seem an artifact from bygone days when the music industry
wasn’t saturated with the spectrum of pre-packaged fluff
and orchestrated angst.
Phish didn’t
emerge from their self-titled “hiatus” to bluntly
comment on the state of world. From the opening track “Pebbles
and Marbles” (with its soft J. J. Cale guitar lines) which
ponders our need and aptitude to find meaning and personal significance
in the world, to the title track where the protagonist insists:
“Put me in a square room and I won’t know what to
say, I want a round room at the end of the day” -- Phish
is still making reflective, fresh music that revels in the mystery
and beauty of life while quietly and sometime goofily communicating
the uncertainly and tangled patterns of relationships and the
life of the mind.
With several of the tracks clocking in near or
over ten minutes, front man Trey Anastasio and longtime band mates
-- bassist Mike Gordon, pianist and keyboardist Page McConnell,
and drummer Jon Fishman -- carve out a space in the music where
notes have the prerogative to move around the mark. Most of the
songs are penned by Anastasio and lyricist Tom Marshall and further
develop Phish penchant for jamming around and between complex
and delicate fugues.
But while
the characteristic improvisational excursions that the band is
famous for are dynamically present on Round Room (the
jam in “Seven Below” captures the spirit of live Phish
perhaps better than any studio tune to date), it is the rich melodies
and emotional directness of the lyrics that hold the album together.
The deep and abiding need for communication is the central theme
of Round Room. But though the songs yield a personal
intimacy, one feels that they are projecting beyond the story
of lovers or friends to the world outside the round room. And
in an moment in history where politicians communicate in cue card
spin and political negotiation is neglected for ambition and force,
perhaps Phish has something to communicate to the post-9/11 world
after all.
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About the writer:
Lance Bauscher is a documentary filmmaker and freelance writer.
His documentary film about Phish fans is in pre-production and
Maybe Logic, a film about writer Robert Anton Wilson, is due this
spring.
30-Dec-2002 8:19 PM
If you
liked Round Room...
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Tracklist:
1. Pebbles and Marbles
2. Anything but Me
3. Round Room
4. Mexican Cousin
5. Friday
6. Seven Below
7. Mock Song
8. 46 Days
9. All of These Dreams
10. Walls of the Cave
11. Thunderhead
12. Waves
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