Phish bounces around the 'Room' January 10, 2003 - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette By Ed Masley Album Review - Round Room Three Stars No other post-Dead jam-rock band could hope to touch the songcraft at the heart of Phish's finest hours, "Billy Breathes" and "Farmhouse." This time out, the band attempts to find a happy medium between the tightly scripted pleasures of those records and the looser live approach that keeps the Phish-heads coming back for more. You're two minutes into the album before the first song makes its way around to vocals. And 11 minutes in before you hit the second song. But nearly every minute counts in jams that constantly evolve and build and bob and weave and fall apart and build again while finding majesty in chaos; jams that, on occasion, have as much in common with the Velvet Underground as any staple of the tie-dyed noodle-dancer diet (check the first track), jams that start as songs and then become the songs. It's as thought the band never went away, recording this reunion disc in just four days while it was supposed to be gearing up for New Year's Eve (which would only appear to have heightened the natural sense of spontaneity that's always fueled the interplay). The lyrics may, at times, sound better to the stoned (especially the title cut, a head-on collision of one-bong-hit-too-many lyrics and the kind of cruise-ship vibe you'd look for in a Jimmy Buffett concert). But for all its goofy charm and heavy-lidded hippie platitudes, the band is becoming increasingly lucid. Heartfelt, even. And Trey Anastasio's aching vocals make the most of moments as direct (for them) as "She gave me ideas/Planted the seed/But she never stopped to reflect/The course that she's on/Wherever it leads/I would never direct." Copyright © 2003 Post Gazette