Miss Piggy Lunchbox

I think everybody who went to college in the mid-90’s has exactly one Phish album. My Baby had Rift. J-mez had this one, its successor. I had two: Junta and Billy Breathes, but then I’m kind of an exception when it comes to CDs.

If I were to speculate on why this happens, and screw it, let’s speculate, it’s because everybody picks one to try based on the buzz…maybe they see it on sale in the new releases section…and then decides they’re not all that. Of course, Phish fans don’t have any Phish in their collection, at least not studio-produced stuff like this. They all know that Phish is about the live show, so if they do own any it’s, like, Phish’s Halloween show where they did the Beatles’ White album or whatever.

But anyway, if you were to only have one Phish album, you could do a lot worse than Hoist. It’s good, though it falls quite a ways short of great. Only three of the 11 tracks piss me off, which is a pretty good ratio considering that the ratio of the world at large that pisses me off is much higher. There’s one undeniable mixer and a couple others that came close. “Down With Disease” gets me bopping, but it’s a little too obvious in Phish’s way, and “Axilla [Part II]” would have been a mix candidate if it weren’t for the slowed-down talking at the end.

Speaking of noises, I don’t know what the band is going for on “Riker’s Mailbox” or “Demand.” The former is only a few seconds of sound effects, while the latter has its moments, like when the jam ends with a crash and a beautiful, ethereal chorus appears, but the song is almost 11 minutes long, the jam is pretty dull, and there’s a dumb sound-effects part smack in the middle of it. Still, neither has me grabbing for the remote as fast as “Lifeboy,” which finds that magic combination of amazingly dull and super long, or “Scent Of A Mule,” whose echoes of Dueling Banjos make my hair stand on end.

Everything else is pretty good, though, and, since the best part of reviewing a Phish album is poking Phish fans, I’m going to give credit to the performers on here who aren’t the band. The Tower of Power horns add a new flavor to “Julius” and “Wolfman’s Brother” that camouflages that hesitant Phish sound that makes my skin crawl and my stomach queasy, and Alison Krauss is gorgeous, as always, on “If I Could,” which doesn’t get mixed just because it spends too long on repeat at the end.

Still, I want to make this absolutely clear: I like this album. I can listen to it from start to finish and enjoy myself most of the way through. And, really, I don’t actually paint Phish fans with this broad of a brush. It’s just the one that has stuck in my memory. All broad-brushing is just for entertainment purposes. Plus, Phish is one of the biggest proponents of FLAC, which is awesome.

Rating:

Mixer: “Wolfman’s Brother”
Non-keepers: “Riker’s Mailbox,” “Lifeboy,” “Scent Of A Mule,” “Demand”
Filed Between: Phish’s Junta and Billy Breathes

Tags: 1994, 4 lunchboxes, CD reviews, J-mez' collection, music

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 at 7:16 am and is filed under CD reviews, music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.