To honor the 30th anniversary of "A Picture of Nectar", I gave it an attentive listen, something I do not think Phish fans do often enough. As far back as I can remember, a new studio album from Phish was often met by fans as a flight of fancy - an interesting diversion (or even a <gasp> sellout!), but not the real meat of what Phish was about. Sure, the album is OK, but have you heard [insert awesome show date]?
This is a shame, because Phish albums are quite good. They can be multi-layered, nuanced recordings that add new flavor and instrumentation to the songs we know or snapshot representations of the band's craft with minimal yet supple production. Sometimes, both. The first three albums, however, are neither of those things. While one might expect the major-label debut of "Nectar" to utilize the full force of Elektra to beef up its sound, it instead sounds like the end of a trilogy of Phish emerging from the studio with an album of Phish songs, performed in the exact arrangements as Phish plays them at its many, many gigs. The upshot is that these are expertly executed, well-recorded, high quality versions of these soon-to-be-classic tunes, in a time when - get ready for this, kids - the internet was not a big thing; when fans relied on taped shows copied endlessly on cassettes of varying quality.
Thus, my first thought today, the moment "Llama" began: This sounds great! The recording is "produced by Phish" according to the liner notes, but it does not so much sound "produced" as it does well-engineered (courtesy of Kevin Halpin). It is a bright, sparkling, trebly record - a hallmark of 1990s CD-era production. Aside from some vocal processing (heavy reverb, some flange, and the down-pitching of Trey Anastasio's lead vocal in "Chalk Dust Torture" that makes him sound almost like his future Oysterhead bandmate, Stewart Copeland), a few instances where rhythm guitar can be heard alongside a lead guitar part, and a guest appearance by Gordon Stone on pedal steel and banjo ("Poor Heart"), there really is not much production going on.
While the bass guitar is not as high in the mix as I am sure the People for a Louder Mike folks would have liked, Gordon's bass is distinct, clearly audible and, wow, truly amazing. Little melodies fly in and out in "Stash" and "The Mango Song", slapping and plucking abound on "Cavern" and "Tweezer", and a rolling bottom-end anchors "Poor Heart" and "The Landlady". It is all on wonderfully crisp display.
The drums, too, offered some surprising moments to which my ear never really tuned before. I had never even remembered there being drums at all on "Eliza", but Jon Fishman offers elegant tom and cymbal accents. The clarity of the open-and-close of the hi-hat in "Glide", the light jazz touch of "Magilla" and tight-snare sixteenth notes on "Chalk Dust" are a delight to hear without the room noise of the audience recordings of the shows. Even the soundboard recordings of those early shows do not capture this much detail because those mixes are meant for the room, not for the tape.
The two places where everything comes together beautifully are (no surprise) the two jam features - "Stash" and "Tweezer". On both of these, the band members lock into a groove and then proceed to branch out in different directions, while still remaining completely in step. Pay attention to any one of the instruments and it is like you are listening to a whole new take on the song as each comes unglued and builds to a frenzy of controlled chaos. Page McConnell's playing is stellar as he tickles the ivories of the real piano (as opposed to the keyboard he used during that era's shows). And of course, there is the frenetic yet focused drive from Trey's guitar solos which bring the jams to their peaks. There is not a bad or wasted note.
Taken as a whole, though, this is a strange album. While it may have been the most accessible Phish album at the time, this is not the one you want to play now for someone that has never heard the band. The running order alone challenges a newbie to hang on for dear life.
Things start off with rockers "Llama" and "Cavern", which sandwich the pretty interlude of "Eliza". The quick bluegrass detour of "Poor Heart" hints that, yes, this is an eccentric band (or, as a flyer from a then-recent gig put it, an "eclectic, wacko quartet from Vermont"). "Stash" has a rhythmic structure that was not like anything you heard on the radio, but the quality of the performance is enough for even the biggest skeptic to get what the fuss was about, and the brief "Manteca" tag lets the listener know that there is somehow a Dizzy Gillespie influence here - not your typical rock n' roll move. All sense of anything typical goes out the window during "Guelah Papyrus", where the verse-chorus structure gets interrupted midway by a fugue.
Then comes the middle third. Lyrics fall by the wayside as the band shows off its instrumental chops. "Magilla" is a Duke Ellington-esque jazz number, followed by the Santana-like Latin clave rhythm of "The Landlady". Both are completely wordless and any other band would probably stagger these two curios as interludes between their actual songs. But these are not mere diversions for Phish. They are placed together in the middle of the album as a centerpiece. During the next 13 minutes, lyrics appear in "Glide" and "Tweezer" but are unimportant. These are not songs, per se, so much as exhibitions for the full power of Phish's musical interplay.
The final third of the album starts with what is closer to an actual song ("The Mango Song") but even that is turned sideways when, for the final verse, instead of repeating one of the previous verses, as a rock or pop song would tend to do, they repeat all three verses at the same time. The album's most accessible rocker ("Chalk Dust") - the one that any other band would likely put toward the top - finally, satisfyingly, hits before the full left turn into Weirdsville ("Faht" and "Catapult") makes any uninitiated listener think that maybe that flyer was right. After "Tweezer Reprise" offers a hefty climax as a variation on (but definitely not a mere rehash of) its namesake predecessor, one can only stop and reflect on everything that had happened in the previous hour.
I cannot imagine another band on Earth sequencing an album this way. That said, I also cannot imagine another band on Earth throwing so many different styles into one pot that even they referred to it as "soup" when they promoted their next, more focused and fully-produced album, "Rift". But Phish was never a band that made any concessions in order to find people. "A Picture of Nectar" shows a band that put it all out there to reward the people that find them. Three decades later, those rewards keep coming with every listen.
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