Photo Credit: Bahram Foroughi
On Friday, Aug. 9, Phish returned to Bethel, N.Y.’s Bethel Woods Center to kick off a three-night series at the essential venue. Drawing heavily on its 90s canon, the band delivered a performance that proved its momentum, building to some of the bigger and bolder jams of its summer tour without straying too far from its tried and true format. Highlights arrived in awe-inspiring treatments of the certified classic “Tweezer” and more recent favorite “Pillow Jets,” which ornamented an already thrilling performance and amplified expectations for Mondegreen next weekend.
Phish took the stage for its first set with “First Tube,” uncommonly featured in this opening position, and showed an appetite for destruction from the jump by executing the track’s jam section with palpable force. The band then strode confidently into a toe-tapping “No Men in No Man’s Land,” during which the quartet stacked hazy and drawn-out individual performances to produce a scenic, enveloping sonic world that only intensified through the second song’s close.
“Cavern” came next, and the band zipped through a straight-ahead run of the funking A Picture of Nectar classic to jump into “My Friend My Friend,” which launches a face-melting exploration of hard grooves and heavy effects. With the band now completely locked into each other’s slightest maneuvers, they weaved effortlessly through complex changes in cadence and passed the torch so each member saw a chance to add some unexpected twist to the track, which clocked in at 18:30 as the most expansive rendition of the Rift staple to date.
After the unexpected lift-off, the band recomposed itself with solid stabs at “Bug” and “Julius.” “Also Sprach Zarathustra” brought things back to an epic scale with a funking, steamy space odyssey at times recalling Deodato’s disco-inflected 1973 version. This cut bridged into “Taste,” which in turn brought the band to a confident first-set closer of “Character Zero.”
Phish kept its ‘90s theme strong as it launched the second set with Rift’s “The Wedge.” After this opener, the band staged the evening’s centerpiece: a sprawling triple-take of “Tweezer,” which also supercharged the tracks that fell between each frame. The band’s first go of the unmistakable 1992 classic covered a hell of a lot of ground, running the range from warm, sugar-coated sprints, to menacing densely layered explosions of sound, to more structured passages that toyed with funk and jazz undercurrents.
After stretching on for an impressive 24 minutes, the band brought on its sole Evolve feature of the evening, showing “Pillow Jets” an unconventionally audacious run, going particularly big with its solos and quick with its licks to summon a storm of beats and effects. “Tweezer” emerged again from the eye, carrying the band off to a shimmering wonderland of “Piper” that turned in on itself a heated up again for yet another drop into “Tweezer.”
This astounding sequence led the band into an exultant reprieve with The Rolling Stones’ “Shine A Light.” Finally pausing to cool off from that red-hot series, the band closed out its second set with a toothy and playful “Chalk Dust Torture.” Foregoing a “Tweezer Reprise,” the quartet finally concluded its show with a three-song encore, running “Big Black Furry Creature from Mars” for the first time this year, followed by a medley of “Gotta Jibboo” and “More.”
Phish returns to Bethel Woods tonight, then closes out its run at the arena tomorrow, August 11. Next weekend, the band will head to The Woodlands of Dover, Del. for Mondegreen, its long-awaited 11th music festival. For tickets and more information on the band’s ongoing summer tour, visit phish.com.
Read on for the complete setlist from Friday night.
Phish
Bethel Woods Center – Bethel Woods, N.Y.
8/10/23
Set I: First Tube, No Men In No Man’s Land, Cavern, My Friend, My Friend [1], Bug, Julius, Also Sprach Zarathustra > Taste, Character Zero
Set II: The Wedge, Tweezer, Pillow Jets -> Tweezer -> Piper -> Tweezer > Shine a Light, Chalk Dust Torture
Encore: Big Black Furry Creature from Mars, Gotta Jibboo > More