Trey Anastasio: Trey Anastasio Live And Acoustic
Trey Anastasio Live and Acoustic may have only been recorded last year, but it was years in the making. While steadily outputting blue-ribbon tunes for Phish’s catalog (“What’s Going Through Your Mind”) and for his namesake band (“All Pretending”), Anastasio has simultaneously been accumulating a quieter, more song-oriented cache to fortify his episodic acoustic tours with songs that appear calibrated for the format—songs like “Lost in the Pack” and “A Little More Time,” both of which hit in some kind of idealized way here.
In 1999, when Anastasio began distilling Phish classics for solo acoustic guitar (during the opening sets of his first solo tour), it was a novel way for fans to experience and connect with some of Phish’s most beloved compositions. Anastasio reportedly composed some of these with ornate instrumentation—horn sections, orchestras—in his head before retrofitting them for a rock quartet. Their live acoustic deconstruction felt like a special peek behind the curtain, a glimpse inside the kitchen, a look under the hood.
Anastasio has continued to strip some of Phish’s biggest treasures of all their fancy, effect-laden clothing for intimate nights with just his acoustic guitar. But ever since the lonely trip of pandemic times, he’s also been steadily adding to a solo acoustic catalog with songs that purposefully beg for nothing more. Songs that pass the campfire test.
Even then, reflective of his explorative nature as an artist, Anastasio’s songwriting approach remains tirelessly dynamic, first exploring the craft with different intentions for different destinations, then taking the outcomes cross-platform with him. “Petrichor,” which appears here as an unexpected album highlight, successfully completes just such a journey, having gone from orchestra to quartet to duo with all its grace intact.
For that one and others that benefit from an extra pair of hands to hold their delicate folds, Anastasio is accompanied by pianist Jeff Tanski, with whom he began collaborating during the pandemic and later during the eight-series “Beacon Jams” livestreams (fall 2020).
Tanski tastefully maintains a supportive role, subtly augmenting intricate presentations of songs like “Divided Sky,” “Billy Breathes,” and “Stash,” while other pearls like “Lifeboy,” “Strange Design” and “Brian and Robert” are left to stand on their own bones, offering fans a direct connection to them and, by proxy, to Anastasio himself.
Phish’s dedicated digital streaming platform, LivePhish released all of the source shows for this compilation immediately after their performance, framing this release as an offering for the wider fanbase that doesn’t have the app or that may not be familiar with Anastasio’s solo acoustic sphere. But given the magic touch of post-production, these curated cuts have never sounded better than they do here. Both sonically and performance-wise, as far as the live acoustic stuff goes, Trey Anastasio Live and Acoustic feels less like an introduction and more like a grand showcase.
