Phish
Undermind
2004 Elektra Records
Why was it forgotten?
With Phish's recent comeback and ensuing summer tour, and my subsequent attendance at two of those shows, I thought I'd take a look back at Phish's 2004 (and still, to date, last) studio album, Undermind. This was a strange album because it was released at a time when Phish was arguably at their zenith of popularity, and yet it quickly came and went in and out of the consciousness of even the most devoted Phish fan. So what happened?
In the spring of 2004, Phish made two major announcements about their immediate future. The first: a new forthcoming studio album, called Undermind, to be released in June. Undermind was the first Phish studio album since 2002's lackluster Round Room, which is also potential fodder for a future edition of this column.
The second announcement? A summer tour for 2004, complete with a patented Phish festival to wrap things up. For the uninitiated, Phish put together a number of festivals over the years, emanating from backwoods Maine and Vermont. These festivals were essentially Phish-themed carnivals, with thousands upon thousands of people flocking to some abandoned airfield to get fucked up and watch Phish play for days on end. The festival to end the 2004 summer tour would take place in Coventry, VT (imaginitively titled "Coventry"), and Phish also stated that Coventry would represent their last concert ever.
You can imagine the bereavement of hippies worldwide upon hearing this news, but the summer tour and Coventry festival also brought about tremendous anticipation for the band's final shows. The tour was wildly successful, despite featuring some of Phish's worst cohesiveness and musicianship to date. The idea of "the end of Phish", however, had the side-effect of rendering their new studio album into an afterthought, and at times, an annoyance.
That Undermind lacked Phish's signature free-flowing jams was one thing; Phish had been moving away from that type of material and toward a more mature songwriting style for its past several studio albums anyway (Billy Breathes (1996), Farmhouse (2000), the aforementioned Round Room). Fans of the band may not have been crazy about the new material, but that's not what sunk the album.
Fans had absolutely no tolerance for these new songs, which were just introduced to them, being played on this, THE LAST TOUR. There was no time to waste on songs from Undermind when each tune that passed brought Phish closer to its end, and fans turned their back on the album. Songs from Undermind became time for gabbing with pals and taking trips to the pisser. Crowds for these songs were flatter than a pancake. Exasperated hippies screamed, "Play Golgi, dammit!"
Though Phish stuck to their guns and continued playing these songs throughout the tour, they never caught on, and Undermind was largely forgotten even though it remains their most recent studio. Phish had inadvertently sunk their new album with their retirement.
Was the album really a waste, or could we just not see through the Coventry-related cloud of marijuana smoke?
Should it be forgotten?
Yes. Actually, Undermind had a chance to be a strong record. The album starts with an eclectic and interesting intro piece called "Scents and Subtle Sounds". I'm a sucker for both intros and outros, and though this is a bit pointless, it was an enjoyable beginning to the album nonetheless.
The title track, "Undermind", is a funky romp with a head-nodding, plodding bass line. It's a little repetitive, though, and runs out of steam about halfway through. An aimless jam in the middle of the song could have been edited down or entirely scrapped and the song would be better off for it.
Undermind is a clean-sounding, well-produced record. It takes a different approach from Billy Breathes and Farmhouse and eschews the brief singer-songwritery pieces to continue Round Room's tradition of trying to fit Phish's live sound into a studio setting. I don't blame them for trying it, but their free-wheeling essence really doesn't play well in three to four minute snippets.
"The Connection" has been the target of much derision from Phish fans, due to its poppy sound and its play on top forty stations nationwide during the summer of 2004. But it really isn't that bad, and sometimes a catchy song can share some of its brightness with the surrounding tracks. At 2 1/2 minutes, it's over before it even starts anyway, in terms of Phish songs, so the criticism is largely unwarranted.
One of the most prevalent songs from Undermind played on tour is "A Song I Heard the Ocean Sing", which layers some interesting riffs and vocals and lends itself to jamming more than anything else on the record. There's a lot of good stuff happening here, with strong and unique drumming from Jon Fishman and piano from Page McConnell. This may be the most solid studio jam they've done since 1998's The Story of the Ghost.
The McConnell-written and piano driven "Army of One" follows, one of the only songs since the album's release that I go back and listen to from time to time. McConnell is not a very strong vocalist, but his struggling voice finds the right notes here, and he handles the well-written crescendos strongly. In listening, the first half of Undermind isn't too damn bad.
All good things...you know. Track 6, "Crowd Control", showcases a lame pop song with a lack of imagination and anything interesting or gripping occurring. One minute and forty-four seconds is then absolutely wasted with non-song "Maggie's Revenge", which adds absolutely nothing to the album and serves only to cause listener annoyance. To end the suite, "Nothing" has a snappy, galloping beat, but not much else. Unlike "Crowd Control", "Nothing" isn't necessarily lifeless, it's just dead air. Listening, I had a constant feeling of "OK, now what?"
"Two Versions of Me" loses the pretensions and shows Undermind for what it truly is, or what its makers intended it to be. This is a straight pop record. I appreciate Phish trying something new and also elaborating on where they had been before, but a lot of these songs are what you'd expect from a bad pop album. 3-4 minute banal, mediocre songs with no strong hooks. It's really a tale of two records; the strong, punctuated first five songs, and then a bunch of shit.
Phish's nasal-voiced George Harrison, Mike Gordon, gets his one song on the album with "Access Me", and makes it an embarrassing one, shoehorning bad lyrics where they don't belong and helping exacerbate the record's continuing free-fall off the cliff. "Scents and Subtle Sounds" is then reprised into a longer, elaborated jam. Unsurprisingly, it briefly turns the album around a bit. The song has an aura of finality about it, and would have served as a fine close.
The last three songs of Undermind are brutal. They include: a repeating, two-minute chant ("Tomorrow's Song"), an extremely misguided seven minute uber lame soft piano song ("Secret Smile"), and an a capella finale ("Grind"). Most egregious of these is "Secret Smile", which Phish is ridiculous enough to think would pull listener heartstrings because this is the second to last song by the band. Again, in a way, a small part of me respects them for trying this, but it falls so unbelievably flat, even in light of the other crap on the album. It plays like a Trey Anastasio power trip, and anyone hearing this bloated seven minute ode to George Winston before news of the band's break up must have seen the writing on the wall.
Undermind definitely had circumstances working against it, but not much on the record really helped its cause, either. Phish has since returned, and a new studio album is due in a month or two. Let's hope that they're able to move forward from this debacle and release something worthwhile.
C-
John Lacey
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