It’s been almost a week since Kendrick Lamar’s masterful Super Bowl halftime show, and many are still singing its praises, like Trey Anastasio, who raved about the performance in a new interview this week.
“When I saw Kendrick the other night, I was losing my mind,” Anastasio told GQ. “I thought, ‘This is the deepest thing I’ve ever seen at a Super Bowl.’”
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The comment came in the context of Anastasio describing his own band, Phish, as “not a very surface band,” which sometimes calls for listeners to dig into the material a little bit before they start to understand the magic. Caveating that he makes “this comparison without even a drop of quality comparison,” Anastasio likened it to Kendrick’s performance.
“I watched it three times, and I still couldn’t pick up on all the messages he was conveying,” he said. “It was a piece of art. But it wasn’t all on the surface. It wasn’t McHalfTime Show. You had to dig in a little bit, and anyone who did dig in was rewarded. I love things like that.”
Anastasio also expressed a bit of bafflement at the mixed reviews the halftime show received. Impressed with the performance and content, he “just assumed everyone thought that, until I talked to Patrick [Jordan, Phish’s manager] the next day. I don’t really look at the Internet, but he said, ‘A lot of people didn’t really like it.’ How could you not like that?”
In other Anastasio news, Phish was recently nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. If the band gets inducted, Anastasio said he would be “honored” to have Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend introduce them. “He is so articulate and smart and from New York and a lovely guy, and I think he gets it. It would be nice if someone could do it who wasn’t a star that was just assigned, someone who doesn’t understand Phish,” he explained to GQ.
Next month, Anastasio will hit the road for a solo acoustic tour stopping in Boston, New Orleans, Nashville, Washington DC, and more cities. Phish themselves will then embark on a tour this spring.
As for Lamar, he will continue his ongoing victory lap — which included some major Grammy wins earlier this month — with a stadium tour with SZA, kicking off in April. Get tickets here.