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A "Joy" to behold: Phish's latest record
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"Happy, happy, oh, my friend," Trey Anastasio sings as Phish's latest release, Joy, opens, setting an aptly warm tone for the 53 minutes to come. The band's first album since its 2004 outing, Undermind, and highly-publicized 2008 reunion, Joy could not have been more appropriately titled. Where Undermind was dark, brooding and reflective of Anastasio's serious bout with drug addiction, Joy offers the flip side of the story, a declaration and celebration of perseverance, overcoming and deep, old friendship. The band has written better songs, certainly performed with greater musicianship and found tones and themes more fitting of their improvisational, goofy and eclectic nature, but has never before captured the present moment in their quarter-century story of endurance and glory as well as they do here.
The aforementioned line comes from Joy's opening track, a definitive Phish tune known as "Backwards Down the Number Line." A rollicking, uplifting jam-blues fest, "Backwards" reminisces about the old days without even brushing arms with sadness. Anastasio layers a country-folk acoustic guitar with his trademark electric lead, calling to mind (as he has at several points in his career) Jerry Garcia comparisons, but somehow simultaneously singling himself out as one of the most distinctive guitarists of the past two decades. Page McConnell's piano is also prominent here, as he plays a boogie-woogie style with both classical and 60's pop flourishes. While Anastasio's lead is the musical star, the real secret weapon is one of Phish's most vintage: the harmonized vocals. As they have admitted over the years and demonstrated in live barbership quartet performances, not a single member of this band has a great voice, but the sum of their separate parts creates goosebump-inducing magic. "All my friends, backwards down the number line," the boys sing behind Trey's chorus, an addition that lifts "Backwards" to new heights. Anastasio comes in with his howling guitar solo and the listener is drawn into Phish's classic spontaneity, McConnell filling in the gaps magnificently. Once the chorus reappears, everything comes together and the celebration truly begins as the song ends.
One would likely not think a song featuring a seemingly endless repetition of a phrase like, "Got a blank space where my mind should be," would contain the most positive message in the world, but remember, this is Phish. Bringing to mind the band's infamous sense of humor, "Stealing Time from the Faulty Plan" once again displays Anastasio's fine guitar work, this time bluesier and full of some sort of strange and joyful sorrow. Drummer Jon Fishman and bassist Mike Gordon make this track nasty, laying down a heavy and incessant rhythm section. McConnell's piano rides up and down the scales, but it is his organ that infuses the track with soul and style. Anastasio and long-time lyricist Tom Marshall's lyrics here seem stuck somewhere between the past and present, as well as darkness and light. Overall, the words come out on the light side, as the speaker seems to almost be laughing at himself and saying, "Well, hell, I'm here and this is what I've got, might as well enjoy it and make the most of it."
Joy is dedicated to Trey Anastasio's late sister, who lost her life to cancer last year, and the title track reflects that loss, once again without diving into melancholy. Similar to many of the other melodies on the album but even more prominently, "Joy" recalls the sunny chord progressions and vocal delivery and harmonies of The Beatles. Even Fishman's drum fills sound like Ringo's. While Anastasio is certainly addressing the loss in his life, he also comes across as celebrating that life and putting both his pain and "joy" into this song, along with the rest of the album. When he sings, "'Cause this is your song, too," it sounds as though he is singing to his sister, but also his band and perhaps more than anyone else, the fans. Sifting through Phish's back catalogue, it becomes readily apparent that this group really does, "want you to be happy." The climax of the song is a surging outburst of bliss, punctuated with thickly layered harmonies, Anastasio's glorious repeated lead line and McConnell's twinkling piano.
"Sugar Shack," written by Gordon, and "I Been Around," by McConnell, are the only two songs on the album not penned by Anastasio and Marshall, and it is obvious. Quirky, fun and strange detours from the rest of the material here, the songs balance the heavy reflection of Trey's music, offering some much-needed respite. "Sugar Shack" grows upon each listen, containing tiny, clever moments of the bassist's songwriting strokes. And, it just makes you want to get up and dance. "I Been Around" is difficult to even explain, the most glaring example on this album of the band's sense of humor and knack for the odd. Regardless, on both songs Anastasio's leads still find time to shine. I have never quite been able to wrap my mind around the weirder, goofier side of Phish, so the appeal of songs such as these somewhat escapes me, especially in the latter track. To put it more bluntly, when the band gets too weird, I stop listening and get bored.
Trey has some quirky moments of his own, arriving here in the form of the will-not-get-out-of-my-head fun of "Ocelot." Gordon's bass makes its way to the forefront here, but the greatest star of the show is the interpolation of The Beatles' "Dear Prudence," one of John Lennon's greatest moments in a career full of many. "Won't you come out to play," the background voices dreamily croon as the song closes out, the strong hints of the legends' influence present in "Joy" made much more obvious here. Not quite quirky but certainly suggestive of the band's distinctively different-sounding jams of old, "Kill Devil Falls" is the album's most overt reference to Anastasio's descent into addiction and subsequent attempts at changing his life and getting clean. "Kill Devil Falls" is a location in the song, a symbol of that old, nasty place in the singer/songwriter/guitarist's life. "Don't go back to Kill Devil Falls," he repeats over the shuffling blues number, but claims, "I've learned my lesson, and yes I still remember the last one/But this time will be different, until I do it again," sounding exactly like an addict pushing his way through denial but still battling with his demons and not quite knowing how to silence that awful voice in his head.
Phish gets thrown into the "jam band" category because they cover so much ground in their music but obviously jam quite a bit of the time, so it seems to be the only label that fits. However, when looking back over their span of work, most of their longer-form songs fit more under the progressive umbrella than anything else. "Time Turns Elastic," Joy's 13 and a half-minute opus, is no different. Originally an Anastasio solo song, the band re-works it and creates something that recalls classic Phish structure without really sounding like anything they have done before. Strange chord progressions and oddly shifting transitions mark the song with that Phish otherness, but each section of the multi-part track is quite eloquent and not nearly as dissonant as other songs of this variety in the band's history. Overall, this song pays a serious tribute to Anastasio's genius, an elaborate composition unique and powerful in its own right.
"Twenty Years Later" shines as another Beatle-esque track, featuring a shimmering vocal layering each time the chorus appears, in the form of "I'm still upside down." The lyrics are an inside-out look at the past, present and future of Anastasio and his band and, along with the music, take the listener on a real journey. Beginning with examples of the outlandish way he has lived his life over the course of his adulthood and somehow coming to terms with his existence, Anastasio seems to use the song as a mode of therapy, a way to work through the chaos and make some sense of his wild ride. The chorus says it all, an affirmation of purpose and direction:
"(I'm still upside down)
And it's a small world, but it's turning real fast
(we're upside down)
It's a new day, but the morning has passed
(turned upside down)
It's a short road, but the mountains aren't tall
(lived upside down)
It's a small world... but we all start out small"
The song's coda is one of the great moments on the record, offering a huge sound and a spiritual redemption, both musically and lyrically, as the album's final refrain appears: "Inside this silence see, all are free, all are free/Second time around."
But it is within "Light" that Joy reaches its greatest peaks. Four parts make up this essential song, each unique, epic and undeniably gorgeous. The track opens with a psychedelic slice of instrumental glory, first grounded in Anastasio's spacey guitar work, then evolving with the addition of McConnell's organ, Fishman's half-stepping drums and a wicked keyboard line that rises with Gordon's warm bass. Soon, the sound grows, distortion takes over, Fishman delivers a crafty fill and a whole new song kicks in, the tempo charged and the chord progression completely different. Anastasio's lyrics are simple and concise, but deliver his strongest message on the album of his road from addiction to recovery, hence the track's title. The feeling that he is present in the current moment is stronger here than anywhere else on the record, especially when he sings, "I see the future is less and less there/And the past has vanished in the air." His guitar takes over and shifts the song into a new realm, his playing vast and shining. The final section, however, is the greatest of all. While warm harmonies and layered vocal parts blanket the high points of the rest of the song, as well as much of the rest of the album, they reach no greater heights than during the finale of "Light." Following Anastasio's guitar solo, he comes back in singing the refrain of, "And the light is growing brighter now." He sings it again and is followed by another vocal line, "Obstacles are stepping stones," then "Fences are filters." The original phrase continues repeating, as do the last two lines, but we soon discover these are incomplete phrases, as huge harmonies punctuate the former phrase with the conclusion, "That guide us to our goals," then the latter with, "That purify our souls." The final lyrical space of the song thus becomes:
"And the light is growing brighter now
And the light is growing brighter now
Obstacles are stepping stones
that guide us to our goals!
Fences are filters
that purify our souls!"
The vocals overlap, creating a spine-tingling moment that defines the entire tone of the album and the wonderful changes Trey and his band have created and made in their lives.
While much of the album is fun, and many of the songs are danceable celebrations, Joy nonetheless remains a deeply cathartic and spiritually stimulating experience. After a couple weeks of listening, the record has finally wrapped itself completely around my brain, but more importantly, my heart. As a mild, but strong fan of the group, I am more likely to enjoy this album than a connoisseur of the band. My remarks regarding the stranger songs make this clear, but this is not an album for the uninitiated either. While Joy does contain pop-friendly chord progressions, instrumentation and especially vocals, the band remains true to its roots in making whatever music it wants. Perhaps more relevant than anything else, this record is a sample of vital, pure, positive energy in musical form, a blissful document of a group of men reuniting to do what they love most: write, perform and have fun, all the while moving those who are really listening.
-9/10
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