The best of Phish’s music aims for transcendence. It’s at the heart of any jam band, or really, any kind of improvisatory outfit: an attempt to find language beyond language, to go somewhere you could not go alone. It’s why the length of any given Phish song in concert might stretch deep into the double-digits, and why their loyal legion of fans feel an instinctual desire to see as many of their shows as possible. Despite their massive audience, Phish remain a countercultural force, and their goofy, shroomy jams resonate as an aural rejection of the monotonous sobriety of suburban adolescence. For much of Phish’s fans, the band is akin to the class clown who’s also the smartest kid in the room. Their energy is infectious and vital; when you’re with them, you feel better about yourself. It’s an escapist fantasy.
On Big Boat, the band’s thirteenth album, Phish openly promise salvation from the get-go. In “Friends,” the dumb-as-rocks, vaguely triumphant opening number, drummer Jon Fishman forecasts the coming of the Lord, descending upon the Earth in “some fiery fashion.” But Fishman offers an alternate exit, escaping to the hills and collecting his like-minded compatriots aboard the titular “big boat.” As an opener, it offers a mission statement not dissimilar to My Morning Jacket’s “Victory Dance,” an enthusiastic, if overly simplistic song aimed squarely at the already-initiated. Keyboardist Page McConnell bashes dramatically along his keyboard, like a parody of Roy Bittan on Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell, as Fishman’s toms roll and Trey Anastasio’s fingers glide along his fretboard. Incessant and noisy, “Friends” opens Big Boat with the promise of a Phish album armed with purpose and energy.
That is not the album that follows. Big Boat is at times overwrought and half-assed, gratingly silly and embarrassingly self-serious, both tedious and underwhelming. In other words, it’s a new Phish album. Even still, the lowest points of Big Boat manage to sink lower than just being bad-for-Phish; Big Boat is made even worse by not sounding enough like Phish. The turgid prog-pop of “Waking Up Dead” could be mistaken for any number of anonymous, post-Phish, local jam acts. “Tide Turns,” with its nauseating Jimmy Buffett sleaze, doesn’t even fail for Phish trying to sound like a soul group; it’s more akin to members of Phish begrudgingly joining a wedding band. Somewhere along the way, you get your expected share of underwritten ballads, overly complicated funk wipeouts, and multiple tracks whose runtimes come suspiciously close to the 4:20 mark.
If you love Phish, the release of a solid studio album has likely never been a requirement to stay onboard, even when their releases were fun and relatively consistent, like 1996’s Billy Breathes. Had Big Boat never been released, the live staple “Blaze On” would still find its way to their blissed-out crowds, as it has on the last several tours. And while “Blaze On” is no latter-day classic like, say, “So Many Roads,” its inclusion here and on their setlist does represent an example of Phish updating their repertoire without resorting to the tried-and-true album-and-single cycles they’ve always existed squarely outside of.
As such, Phish exist in a number gray areas. They are an indie-minded band with mainstream appeal; a classic rock group who rejects the genre’s radio-focused populism; an enormously competent outfit who use their expertise to promote their euphoric brand of anti-intellectualism. If Phish were to embrace their unique position in the industry, one could imagine them penning albums that were, if not definitive, then at least approaching coherence, like modern-day Wilco. Instead, Big Boat is another failure in a discography full of them. Without a unifying identity, it whiffs on nearly every statement it tries to make. For a group of musicians whose sole value has always been the simple pleasure of making music, the members of Phish sound noticeably vacant in these recordings.
Still, none of the album’s weaknesses (like McConnell rhyming “losing my interest” with “just scanning Pinterest”) would be half as disappointing if Phish weren’t almost aging gracefully. The last several years have had some undeniable high points—from the simple, nostalgic rock of 2009’s Joy through 2014’s Fuego, easily the band’s most inspired record since the ’90s. On Big Boat, they come up with a few winning moments. Trey’s guitar solos throughout the otherwise rote balladry of “Miss You” are genuinely moving in a way his humdrum vocals and plainspoken lyrics could never be. McConnell’s “I Always Wanted It This Way” is the album’s peak, a defiant Motorik jam that wouldn’t sound out of place on a 21st-century Yo La Tengo album. The album closes strikingly with “Petrichor,” an immaculately arranged prog opus. It might not be a track to convince the naysayers (or even, with its thirteen-minute runtime, to necessarily warrant a second play). But it’s the only moment on the album when Phish shows—and not just tells—that transcendence is possible, and that they’re willing to go there with us.
