Phish Close Out Mondegreen Festival With Extended Single-Set Sunday Matinee
Photo Credit: Bahram Foroughi
Sunday, Aug. 18. marked the fourth and final day of Mondegreen, Phish’s highly-anticipated 11th signature music festival. In presenting its closing show, Phish contended with some inclement weather that forced an abbreviated daily program for the festival and a set change for the band; in place of its traditional planned two-set evening finale, the band presented an expanded single-set staging with an encore at 1 p.m., beating the forecasted storm to the punch with a matinee. In this shortened show, the band still managed to administer a heavy dose of thrills, wounding out a weekend of classics with a last few essential entries.
Phish opened its set with “Party Time,” the bubbly romp well-suited to introduce a sunny early-afternoon concert. Next came a heady, celebratory “Axilla,” which added encouragement to a sea of dancing fans with the winking “Axilla Part II” ending launching a bold total segue into “Maze.” This third landmark thriller led the band into its first deep-end jam of the performance, spinning a complex web of melodic throughlines that kept pioneering instrumental excursions tethered to the song’s core.
The band set out for new moods with “Steam,” bringing in some shadowy psychedelia with a pounding bass heart from Mike Gordon that tugged against phantasmic sheets of scenic synths from Page McConnell. “Martian Monster” accented this shift perfectly, getting odder on a trip to the stars that came crashing down to earth with a funky, gritty “AC/DC Bag,” which brought the audience’s energy to a mid-set peak.
When the recent setlist staple “Sigma Oasis” came sliding in, Phish rode its wave of uplifting, comfortable tones into another deeply affecting jam dive, from which the band surfaced again to a seamless transition into “Rift,” which came as only the third cut from that beloved 1993 album in the weekend’s performances. “Stash” set up another far-reaching jam with a distinctive emphasis on heavier, dissonant rock, which the band clearly highlighted throughout the festival. Around this point, the crowd seemed to arrive at a consensus that the fell steam set showed no signs of stopping and would likely run on as the sole staging of the day.
Phish’s breezy, danceable cover of the calypso rarity “Ya Mar” brought a bopping, exuberant tone recalling the famous treatment by Bahamanian innovators Dry Bread. The bouncing dance of this track led through into “Timber (Jerry the Mule),” another cover so closely associated with Phish that its origins are regularly eclipsed by its new prominence. The band steered into some heavier tones for this cut that simmered off with the angel’s share as they then cooked up some “Bathtub Gin,” beginning the massive final sprint of the festival.
The knee-slapping goodness of this bootlegging sprint brought the quartet into an unexpected revival of its cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “Izabella.” This shreddy standout cascaded the group into “Simple” and then the ascendant, beaming show closer to “Golden Age.” For an encore, Phish broke out “Fuego” for the song’s imperative feature in the weekend’s performances and the song’s first-ever encore placement. “Fuego” ran on past the 17 minute mark as the longest track in Sunday’s performance, enabling each member to give off at least one more massive rally to bid the memorable weekend and its legions of fans a fond farewell.
Phish will return to the stage for the final performance in its top-tier summer series on Aug. 29 for its exhilarating traditional four-night run at Commerce City, Colo.’s Dick’s Sporting Goods Park. Find tickets and more information on that series, and the rest of the band’s scattered engagement remaining on the calendar, at https://phish.com/tours/
Read on for the complete setlist from Sunday night.
Phish
Mondegreen Festival
The Woodlands — Dover, De.
8/18/24
Set: Party Time, Axilla -> Maze, Steam, Martian Monster, AC/DC Bag, Sigma Oasis -> Rift, Stash, Ya Mar, Timber (Jerry the Mule), Bathtub Gin > Izabella > Simple > Golden Age
Encore: Fuego
