Phish's 'Farmhouse' May 30, 2000 - Chicago Maroon (U. Chicago) By Moacir de Sa Pereira Album Review - Farmhouse Almost two years ago, Phish released what was quite obviously their worst album ever. The Story of the Ghost, though lauded as a mature and delicate piece of tight playing, was in fact weak, dull, and lacking completely in body. The songs felt more like riffs with increasingly distracting lyrics all leveled by the great equalizer, over-production. The one good turn done by the band over the whole album was "Guyute," a song which debuted back in 1994. The band's recorded output had been, more or less, slipping since their first record, Junta, and the newest CD seemed to mark a point of no return. Phish could do no worse. And they did no worse. The following year, Phish released a six-CD box set of their two November 1998 shows at the Hampton Coliseum in Hampton, Virginia. Hampton Comes Alive is a pretty peculiar collection, and is probably not worth the $ 60 or so it costs, especially when material of the same quality can be acquired on CD-Rs from the Phish taping community. Also, if the set were cheaper, it would be a better introduction to the band. Phish is captured on disc at every stage of their career and personality. There are the goofy covers (an unlistenable "Sabotage," a jarring "Gettin' Jiggy Wit' It," and a delicate "Cry Baby Cry"), the classics from the late-'80s and early '90s ("Foam," "Mike's Song," "Split Open and Melt," and "Possum"), songs enjoying a renaissance ("Bathtub Gin" and "Tube"), the hard set closers ("Cavern" and "Character Zero"), and even the languid ballads of the recent past ("Wading in the Velvet Sea"). It's an encyclopedic collection of songs, almost, and most of the tracks are performed admi rably. This is no surprise, of course, because Phish is, and will always be, known as primarily a live band. One track hiding on the third disc of Hampton Comes Alive, "Farmhouse," is the opening track of Phish's first contribution to the new millennium, Farmhouse. The album serves as departure from the completely deplorable Story of the Ghost, but an old Bob Weir anecdote comes to mind listening even to Farmhouse. According to legend, while on a talk show, Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead responded to a question about worrying about lost album sales from trading of concert tapes by saying, "We'll worry about it when we release an album worth buying." So since every song on this album has enjoyed a life on the concert circuit which predates the recording of Farmhouse, it's conceivable that a person could cook up a disc of all the same songs, but with live versions that blow the album away. This is, however, only a theory. And since this is a review of the studio output and not of a concert, I can disregard the live aspect. If Phish wanted me to take into account the expansive live versions of, say, "Sand," then they should release one of those. So abandoning the crutch of, "But in a concert...," I can say that, save three songs, Farmhouse is forgettable and dull. But it's still better than the previous studio album. Let's start with the slow songs. Back in the day, some nine or ten years ago, the few slower songs (or ballads, or whatever) had a certain close beauty to them. I'm thinking here of classics like "The Squirming Coil," or "Slave to the Traffic Light," even. "Bug" and "Dirt" fail to come close to the delicate and winning nature of those songs. Instead, both seem like retreads of the (pick one) songs off The Story of the Ghost, which are just derivative versions of the stuff on Billy Breathes, which are, ultimately, bastard children of "Lifeboy," one of the worst Phish songs ever. "Bug"'s repeating chorus of "It doesn't matter," over and over, drowns out in dullness whatever smooth building the band may be making instrumentally. Other tracks, like "Gotta Jibboo" (which features a horn section), "Back on the Train," (which, with "The Inlaw Josie Wales" fulfills the band's bluegrass-ish quota) and "Twist" pick up the pace and are a bit more interesting -- the hand doesn't reach for the Track Forward button -- but it's still just not all together. Three songs, however, as mentioned above, manage to break away from the rest of the pack. The first is "Piper," which is more or less a non-song. I don't know quite as much about this song as I should, but it is, more or less, a song which falls together out of what sounds like just banging on notes. A lot of Phish songs (like "Tweezer") just disintegrate into discrete notes hanging above the crowd. "Piper," then, is a reverse of that. From the unbridled notes it creates a structure, and a catchy one at that. The interesting thing is that a lot of the songs on the previous studio album were criticized for being non-songs in a similar way as "Piper" -- all riff, and then just lyrics thrown over. "Piper," however, manages to grow. Phish managed to capture the same kind of organic bursting (think the Incredible Hulk breaking Dr. Banner's clothes) in the studio. Then, Phish closes out the album with a pair of great tunes, "Sand" and "First Tube." "Sand," as mentioned earlier, has begun to destroy the live scene, and it's very catchy, very quickly. First, Trey (Anastasio, lead guitarist) is playing with a decay effect which works pretty well. Both "Sand" and "First Tube" have the sort of rigid structure that a song like "Maze" features, along with the implicit openness. "Maze," which isn't the most interesting song, has been torn apart and refitted in many intriguing ways. "Sand" and "First Tube" have the same kind of feel. It seems clear that, at least as studio recording is concerned, Phish are pulling themselves out of the gutter. But there's still a lot of work left to cover if they want to reach the heights of their best studio album (Junta, a mix of silly whimsy and involved compositions). I assume that there's always the live shows, still, but I can only speak of those when they start being a part of the discography, and not part of shared memories. (C) 2000 Chicago Maroon via U-WIRE