Phish Is as Good as Ever, Sphere Is New but Not Better: Review

Wren Graves
·5 min read
5

The post Phish Is as Good as Ever, Sphere Is New but Not Better: Review appeared first on Consequence.

Sphere wants you to talk about Sphere and not the band. The world’s biggest LED screen makes for a pretty good music venue, and if you squint past the neon lights you can imagine how it might have been great. But there’s a tension in the design, as the spectacle above literally outshines the concert below. Instead of fostering community, Sphere fractures audience focus, offering glittering temptations in every direction so that each face in the crowd tilts a different way. Sphere is designed to distract you.

For many in the audience during Phish’s four-night residency, that was hardly a problem. The venerable Vermonters became a jam institution four decades ago, and many fans have long run out of fingers and toes to count the shows they’ve seen. If Sphere became your 120th Phish concert, it was probably more memorable than the 119th.

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One grizzled veteran told my companion that following Phish was like supporting a sports team: Sometimes they’re doing well and sometimes he wished they were doing better, but he was always with them. To that mindset, the sold-out four-night residency felt like the Superbowl. Phish and phans have been through ups and downs together, and both generally seem to be in a good place; the long lines of people trailing up to Sphere’s entrance had the air of queuing for a championship parade.

Sphere’s design by architecture firm Populous is easiest to appreciate after the security clusterfuck, standing in the awesome expanse of the atrium. All that open air is wonderful on ground level, but most of the seats are further up, and the path starts with slow-moving single-file lines up escalators. This is followed by arcing, surprisingly claustrophobic hallways that felt even tighter because they were often obstructed by 20-minute bathroom lines. For all I know it would have cost another billion dollars to make the venue a few feet wider, but since it’s not my money, I’ll say they should have spent it.

From here, you walk down tunnels designed to offer a sudden, breathtaking view of Sphere’s waiting screen: a viscerally intense blue-green. The technology is pretty impressive, immersing a crowd into the pretty lights at least as convincingly as this generation of VR headsets can do for a single person at time.

Seating in Sphere is graded much more steeply than at most venues, an interesting idea that works at exactly one distance. The building is made up of four tiers, from GA and floor seats in the 100s up to the 400s, where you and the screen are so close you have to split rent. In the 200s, the steep grade is fantastic: Rarely do you get such a clear look at a band from balcony seats in an 18,000 cap. house. By the 300s, your view of the stage is mostly hair and the occasional bald spot (sorry, Page). In the 400s, there’s hardly a reason to look down.

Phish sounded fantastic both nights I saw them, kicking off the 4/19 show with “Free” and 4/20 with the Anastasio’s solo number “Set Your Soul Free.” Anastasio is obviously the bandleader, but within Sphere’s careful acoustics, Page McConnel’s keyboards and Jon Fishman’s drums controlled how big or small the space felt more effectively than the billion-dollar lights. It was a masterclass in musical dynamics. To borrow the framing of our grizzled Phish veteran, those two were doing well, while I wished Mike Gordon’s meandering bass solos were doing better; he was more fun supporting and chasing after Anastasio’s guitar.

The one dull spot in the mix was Anastasio’s mic. He sounded wildly emotional performing “mercy” from his solo album of the same name, and the 4/20 “Pillow Jets” seems destined to go down as one of its best versions in the Phish canon —  Anastasio’s freewheeling solos coming crisp and sharp, as his voice cut through the arena with such command, not even Sphere’s best neon forest animation could compete. But in almost every other song, across both nights, sitting in two different tiers in the arena and occasionally spying on the others, the mix tended to swallow his voice and render his lyrics inaudibly muddy. Perhaps he approached mic check with more energy than he brought to the stage, and the crew didn’t feel comfortable remixing on the fly. But in an otherwise slick residency — in a venue where production values are supposed to justify exorbitant ticket prices —  the blah vocal mix stuck out.

As for the visuals, Phish approached them with their customary wit, especially during the 4/19 set, when a sudsy, looping ride through a car wash gave way to an enormous dog dragging a 15-foot tongue across the screen. And the band didn’t depend on Sphere for all their spectacle; during “You Enjoy Myself,” Anastasio and Gordon bounced on trampolines in joyous unison.

This is some old Phish fun, charming and low-tech, and it raised a bigger cheer from the crowd than any LED animation except the first one of the night. That’s probably because, for the only time in either show I attended, every eye focused in the same direction. Suddenly, instead of tilting back and zoning out, the audience came to life.

For as cool as it can be, the overall experience is kind of deadening. Awe-inspiring at first, and fantastic with a little bit of acid, but even there it’s not all that remarkable in the landscape of Las Vegas entertainment. The average pop star residency has fewer pretty lights but more sets and practical effects, and if visual stimulation is what you’re after, it’s hard to top the death-defying wonders of Cirque du Soleil.

So what are we left with? Great bands, great acoustics, surprisingly varied sight lines, and the world’s biggest screen that enchants as it distracts. Sphere offers a new kind of concert experience. New, but not better.

Photo Gallery – Phish at The Sphere in Las Vegas, April 18th – April 21st, 2024 (click to expand and scroll through):

Phish Is as Good as Ever, Sphere Is New but Not Better: Review
Wren Graves

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