Phish - Farmhouse May 15, 2000 - Pop Kulture by Staff Album Review - Farmhouse Let's face it, despite the popularity of their live act, Phish is never gonna sell a lot of albums. Serious fans would rather trade live shows than invest in the studio stuff which is a pale approximation of their live sound; and music critics just don't go for the feel-good middle-of-the-road bloodlessness of Phish and their "jam-band" ilk. So as both a big fan of the band, and an amateur self-proclaimed music critic, I have no rational way of explaining why I actually like Phish's studio albums. Sorry, just can't put my finger on it. But I do, and Farmhouse, while a bland, mediocre album by most measures, keeps finding its way back into my stereo. Farmhouse falls somewhere between the band's stronger studio albums (the beautiful, highly underrated Story of the Ghost; the catchy, clever Lawn Boy) and their truly bad albums (the dull, forgettable Hoist; the eccentric but failed Picture of Nectar). The slick, poppy, radio friendly "Heavy Things," as well as the no less commercial title track and the rollicking "Back on the Train" are obviously gonna piss off the purists (and probably not win over many converts from the Britneysync Boys record-buying sheep), but, really, they're pretty hard songs not to like. And the more electric, Santana-esque album closers "Sand" and "First Tube" may be mere blueprints for extended jams, but they also sound pretty great as pure studio creations. Sure, there are some clunkers. "Gotta Jiboo" is a perfect example of why white guys from Vermont should not get down, get funky. "The Inlaw Josey Wales" is little more than a clever title attached to a pretty acoustic guitar piece which is perfectly harmless but better fitted to a Windham Hill sampler. And "Piper," one of Phish's most amazing concert staples, just doesn't work here -- on stage, the song has time to build from lush beauty to a frenetic climax over however long the band feels like taking; here, condensed into 5 minutes, the song's crescendo seems forced and unnecessarily rushed. Still, "Piper" is a great song, an oddly melodic chant over an offbeat 6/4 beat structure, and even in this version there's something compelling about it. Bottom line -- I like it, I can't rationalize it, and I just don't care.