Phish on Sunday returned to East Troy, WI’s Alpine Valley Music Theatre for the third and final night of the band’s third tour stop of the summer—and what a summer it’s been so far. Leading into the eighth overall show of the tour, the band was in the midst of a hot streak. From the opening night in Mansfield last weekend through Saturday’s Alpine Valley rager featuring an easy early candidate for “jam of the tour” in its 40-minute “Simple”, each show has felt more exciting than the last. On Sunday, despite the muggy Wisconsin heat around them, Trey Anastasio, Jon Fishman, Page McConnell, and Mike Gordon seemed to cool off a bit in the second set for the first time this tour, making for a mellower, more reigned-in performance.
The first set, however, was more of the top-notch stuff we’ve been getting for more than a week: “A Song I Heard The Ocean Sing” offered a fantastic voyage out of the gate, its glimmering droplets of Page piano and long, sustained Trey notes charting a clear course into open water. After cascading through “Blue Sky”-reminiscent riffs and building upon a wave of momentum toward a satisfying final crest, “ASIHTOS” slipped into a loose, funky “Tube” just shy of the 16-minute mark—unusually earning the show’s opening song the title of “longest jam of the night.”
A brief, free-wheeling “555” gave way to a gorgeous “Divided Sky” as peach hues of twilight turned orange through holes in the cotton clouds above (no notes, as always) before a combination of a churning, syncopated, tension-building “Wolfman’s Brother” and a light, airy “Bathtub Gin” offered up perhaps the strongest sustained improvisational segment of the show. An emotional reading of “Bug” featured some particularly emotive Anastasio melodies before a gleefully unhinged “Possum” joyride rounded out the opening frame.
But while set one was undoubtedly strong, the second frame never quite achieved liftoff. “Set Your Soul Free” mostly dwelled in an ambient directional vacuum. “Prince Caspian” dove toward the depths for a few brief moments but mainly floated upon the waves at surface level. The sudden appearance of “Chalk Dust Torture” offered some brief hope for fireworks—and a brief flash of thrashing rock brilliance during the composed solo section—but never seemed to break away from percolating, textural stasis and settle into a melodic narrative. Those micro-looper effects they were messing with at the end were cool, though!
A mid-set “Dirt” breather played its touching role admirably, even following a three-song, set-opening run that left plenty of gas in the tank. An “Oblivion” > “Light” combo offered a clever opportunity for darkness/luminosity thematic juxtaposition, but the Evolve standout fizzled more quickly than usual and the reliable Joy jam vehicle never seemed to reach optimal brightness before dimming back down to the droning, shadowy vamp of “Twenty Years Later”.
It’s hard to hate on any version of “2001”, and I won’t hate on this one, but this short trip through the cosmos (sorry) couldn’t muster enough thrust to send this set into orbit. The set-closing “Split Open and Melt” was a maddening, perplexing, thoroughly enjoyable bit of hysteria, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say my first thought when it was finished was, “Good, but not Mansfield good.”
Even the encore, an all-around passable pairing of typical first-set staple “The Wedge” (which came off like an unintentional metaphor for the largely surface-bobbing show) and fiendish exclamation mark “Carini” (good, but not Mohegan good), seemed to underscore overall middling feelings about the performance.
A quick reminder for the comment section that will inevitably tell me I’m wrong for saying non-glowing things about a Phish show: The drawback of taking something consistently enjoyable and pitting it against itself night after night is that it does tend to steal a little joy from the experience. Did Phish sound good last night? Damn right. But did Phish close the 2024 Alpine run with the never-to-be-missed climax of the weekend? Nah. That title goes to Saturday, largely due to the somewhat disjointed nature of Sunday’s second set. That’s not to say it was bad: There was plenty to like on Sunday, but for what felt like the first time this summer, not as much to truly love.
All Phish tours tend to have ebbs and flows, peaks and valleys. While the band may have taken its metaphorical foot off the gas a little on Sunday night, we’ve still got plenty of cruising speed and momentum to set up a high-velocity return to form at the band’s two-night stint at St. Louis, MO’s Chaifetz Arena on Tuesday and Wednesday.
For a full list of upcoming Phish tour dates, head here. Fans can follow along with the tour from home with nightly video webcasts via LivePhish. To order your webcasts for any of the band’s upcoming summer shows or purchase a discounted full-tour webcast package, head here. [Note: Live For Live Music is a LivePhish affiliate. Ordering your webcast via the links on this page helps support our work covering Phish and the world of live music as a whole. Thanks for reading!]
Below, view the setlist and a selection of videos from Sunday’s Phish finale at Alpine Valley.
Setlist [via phish.net]: Phish | Alpine Valley Music Theatre | 7/28/24
Set One: A Song I Heard the Ocean Sing, Tube, 555 > Divided Sky, Wolfman’s Brother, Bathtub Gin, Bug > Possum
Set Two: Set Your Soul Free > Prince Caspian > Chalk Dust Torture > Dirt, Oblivion > Light -> Twenty Years Later > Also Sprach Zarathustra > Split Open and Melt
Encore: The Wedge, Carini
Phish – “A Song I Heard The Ocean Sing” [Pro-Shot] – 7/28/24
Phish – “Dirt” – 7/28/24
[Video: shinepigeon]
Phish – “Chalk Dust Torture” – 7/28/24
[Video: shinepigeon]
Phish – “Set Your Soul Free” [Pro-Shot] – 7/28/24
Phish – “Oblivion” – 7/28/24
[Video: shinepigeon]