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Phish: Fuego

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: JEMP Records
Released: 2014.06.24
Time:
 54:33
Category: Alternative Rock
Producer(s): Bob Ezrin
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.phish.com
Appears with: Trey Anastasio
Purchase date: 2014
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Fuego (Anastasio/Fishman/Gordon/McConnell) - 9:15
[2] The Line (Anastasio/Fishman/Gordon/McConnell) - 5:21
[3] Devotion to a Dream (Anastasio/Marshall) - 5:47
[4] Halfway to the Moon (McConnell) - 6:34
[5] Winterqueen (Anastasio/Marshall) - 4:21
[6] Sing Monica (Anastasio/Marshall) - 3:13
[7] 555 (Gordon/Murawski) - 5:41
[8] Waiting All Night (Anastasio/Fishman/Gordon/McConnell) - 4:58
[9] Wombat (Anastasio/Fishman/Gordon/McConnell) - 3:18
[10] Wingsuit (Anastasio/Fishman/Gordon/McConnell) - 6:05

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Trey Anastasio - Guitar, Vocals
Page McConnell - Keyboards, Vocals
Mike Gordon - Bass, Vocals
Jon Fishman - Drums, Vocals

Charles Rose - Horns
Harvey Thompson - Horns
Doug Moffet - Horns
Vincent Ciesielski - Horns

Bob Ezrin - Background Vocal, Mixing, Producer
Vicki Hampton - Background Vocal
Maureen Murphy - Background Vocal
Joshua Guillaume - Background Vocal
Marie Lewey - Background Vocal
Cindy Walker - Background Vocal
Carla Russell - Background Vocal

Justin Cortelyou - Recording Engineer, Mixing Engineer
John Gifford III - Recording Engineer
Jarod Snowden - Mixing Engineer
Joshua Guillaume - Additional Engineer
Ben Collette - Additional Engineer
Kam Lutcherhand - Additional Engineer
Justin Francis - Additional Engineer
Jared Slomoff - Additional Engineer
Garry Brown - Additional Engineer
Ben Collette - Pre-Production Engineer
Reavis Mitchell - Programming
Mike Burns - Technical Assistance
Brian Brown - Technical Assistance
Kevin Brown - Technical Assistance
Lee Scott - Technical Assistance
Kim Markovchick - Production Coordinator
Paco Pomet - Paintings
Jeri Heiden - Design
Julia Mordaunt - Design

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


Recorded in late 2013, Nashville, TN, Muscle Shoals, AL, Burlington, VT.



The studio album has always been a slippery prospect for any jam band worth taking seriously. Even the earliest champions of live exploration (Grateful Dead, Allman Brothers, etc.) turned in their share of notoriously spotty or confusing studio recordings, much preferring the stage as a place for their craft to really take form. Long-running jam-band institution Phish follow this to a T, releasing scads of live recordings that tend to find superior readings of tunes that come off stuffy or lifeless in their studio versions. Releasing new studio material seems to be a low priority for the band, with 12th studio album Fuego being released five years after 2009's Joy, which itself came after 2004's Undermind. The hallucinatory whimsy and unbridled exuberance Phish exude on-stage has been hard to capture in the confines of the studio, but the excellent and smartly crafted Fuego steps outside of this pattern in a few ways. The logical thing to do when recording a band championed for their excellence in a live setting would be to record them as close to live in the studio as possible, as was the process with the unremarkable Joy. Studio legend Bob Ezrin seems to rethink that approach here, with production that highlights individual elements that make a fantastic whole, rather than the collective energy that so often turns to murky confusion on tape. Instead of an overblown studio creation, Fuego instead finds the band sounding relaxed and connected, but also distinctly articulate in their often complex twists and turns. More than the smart production, Fuego is a standout in Phish's sometimes less-than-impressive studio catalog on the strengths of its ten stellar tracks, inspired tunes that share a loose thread as they bound between virtuosic playing, flirtations with gospel and funk, and the kind of eclectic rock jamming Phish have made their name on. The album opens with its epic titular track, a flashy, caffeinated jam that spins on for almost ten minutes before second track, "The Line," simmers things down with its quirky grooves and a pop-friendly chorus that make the song one of the album's catchiest moments. Fans of the band's goofier side will delight in "Wombat," a dorky funk workout that recalls their early romps with nonsensical lyrical themes and lighthearted genre experimentation. Horns, synthesizers, background singers, and other various sprinklings of production pop up throughout the album, keeping the already sharp tunes sonically interesting on top of solid interplay between the core bandmembers. With sharp production and some of the better compositions Phish have managed in ages, Fuego ranks among their best studio albums, capturing strands of the frenetic, cartoonish, darkly cautionary, and open-hearted expressions that make their concerts such moving experiences, but which often get lost when the tape starts rolling.

Fred Thomas - All Music Guide




On Halloween in 2013, Phish began their second set with a somewhat esoteric reference to golf, of all things: “You’ll never win a major only shooting par.” The lyric belongs to “Wingsuit”, the first of 12 songs Phish debuted that night as a yet-to-be-recorded future album. Although some fans felt tricked out of the band’s usual Halloween cover album tradition, for me and for many other phans, it was pure treat. In the ensuing eight months, we’ve replayed 10/31/13 set II over and over again, analyzing meanings, contextualizing the event, and nerding out, all the while pontificating on how the eventual album would sound. Despite our propensity to unjustly discard the studio albums while cherishing the live recordings, many Phish fans wondered: Might this album be the one that breaks the jam band studio album stigma?

Now we have our answer with Fuego, Phish’s 12th studio album and second since the triumphant 2009 comeback from their 2004 breakup. The answer is probably no: This will not be Phish’s In the Dark, catapulting them into unprecedented popularity. Partly it’s just a different era in the industry, and partly there’s no single that touches the musical zeitgeist as readily as “Touch of Grey” did in 1987. Despite that, the first single, “Waiting All Night”, is excellent, with a lugubrious, lo-fi sheen that floats on deep space bass notes, brightened with acoustic guitar strums.

These new songs display veteran craftsmanship despite only one of them, keyboardist Page McConnell’s superb “Halfway to the Moon”, being honed over years of live playing. Granted, I liked most of the Fuego songs when I heard them live on Halloween, and I’ve grown to love them since, finding beauty in the nuances: guitarist Trey Anastasio’s passionate and pleading chorus to “Waiting All Night”, the shimmering gleam of Floyd-esque psychedelia on “Wingsuit”, or the silences between notes of “Wombat” that make it one of the most unique and exciting funk grooves Phish has created.

So, we must judge Fuego on its ability to stand alone as a work of studio art. On that merit, it has much to applaud. Phish wisely avoided trying to capture the live experience on wax, instead hiring the well-pedigreed classic rock producer Bob Ezrin (Lou Reed, Pink Floyd, Alice Cooper). Ezrin’s most noticeable contribution is the addition of horns and backup singers, most successfully done on “555”, bassist Mike Gordon’s minor-key funk stomp. Punchy horn interjections and powerful female vocal responses add a touch of Stax magic to the Little Feat-flavored groove, not surprising since Phish recorded Fuego in both Nashville and Muscle Shoals, in addition to their Vermont barn-studio.

Like the compositions themselves, the brilliance of Ezrin’s work here is in the nuances. He opted to use a live recording of “Fuego” as the basic track, letting its raw energy shine through in the ass-kicking classic rock guitar riffs and the wild, trancey speed-funk breakdown. He slowed down “Waiting All Night” and “The Line” from their live incarnations by a hair, allowing the former to ooze a touch more lethargically and the latter to settle into its groove pocket a bit more easily. The ’60s psych pop of “Sing Monica” is crisp and endlessly danceable, with a blistering guitar solo to close out the track.

There are spots where Phish and Ezrin stumbled. The most glaring is “Wombat”, a tune that needs to be approached as silly, but whose lyrics are delivered seriously, as if Phish didn’t realize the joke only works if they ham it up. The edges are smoothed over on the normally intense funk jam; not even Ezrin’s horns and soul vocals save the track.

Thankfully, this album’s shortcomings are not due to a drying up of creativity or motivation. Far from being a celebratory nostalgia lap, Phish’s 30th anniversary year of 2013 produced mind-blowing jam after jam after jam. Fuego reveals a band not content to just keep touring like they always have, playing their workhorse “You Enjoy Myself” every fourth night (although they’ll likely still do that). Phish wrote most of these songs together, while the basic rhythms and progressions come directly from some of their best recent concert jams. Their democratic approach to composition signals a more mature band, while individual contributions from Gordon and McConnell are some of their strongest to date.

This is not a band reveling in their storied past, “only shooting par.” Fuego is new and fresh, in both content and intent, changing things up, sinking a few birdies, and settling for a bogey or two.

Jake Cohen - June 25, 2014
© 2007-2015 Consequence of Sound
 
 

Let's say you wanted to write a Phish album in 2014. You might well work in the words "rolling" (high-five, club kids!) and "wombat" (because it's a hilarious word, duh), and name-check recurring Phish-lyric character Wilson. Most important, you'd write optimistic songs that can be jammed all the way up to our depleted ozone in concert. Phish do all this on their 12th studio LP – struggling to transform the onstage magic into bits and bytes, and mostly nailing it.

After the reflective gratitude of 2009's Joy, leader Trey Anastasio's first post-rehab set, the party is back in full swing. Phish toast a crappy Eighties automobile (the title track) and pun on "The Fish TV show/You know, with Abe Vigoda" ("Wombat"). Geek-funk grooves spaz-out merrily, and producer Bob Ezrin keeps it feeling live. Lyrics remain an Achilles' heel, but sometimes Phish hit profundity sideways. "The Line" is a soaring, Steely Dan-ish ballad inspired by Darius Washington Jr.'s famously flubbed free throws during a crucial 2005 college-hoop game. Yet the title metaphor also handily conjures an addict staring down his next dose. "A hero's what I'm not," Anastasio sings ruefully, before spinning out another set of guitar lines that prove him exactly wrong.

Will Hermes - June 24, 2014
RollingStone.com



Phish recorded the album with legendary producer Bob Ezrin (Pink Floyd, Lou Reed, Peter Gabriel) last fall, as the band's 30th anniversary approached. The songs for Fuego took shape during a series of visits to Phish's longtime creative hub, The Barn, a rustic, reconstructed barn-turned-rehearsal/recording studio located outside Burlington, Vermont. There they explored dozens of ideas, which led to a notable shift in the band's songwriting approach. While Fuego includes tracks that individual members brought to the table in usual Phish fashion, the bulk of the material was written by all four, working together at The Barn.

Amazon.com



Fuego is an album by the American rock band Phish. Released on June 24, 2014, it was their twelfth official studio album and their first in five years, since 2009's Joy. The album is a mix of rock, soul, reggae and bluegrass.

Fuego was recorded in late 2013 in Nashville, Tennessee after a series of writing sessions at the Barn in Vermont and was produced by Bob Ezrin (Pink Floyd, Lou Reed, Peter Gabriel). While Fuego's ten new tracks include songs that individual members brought to the table in usual Phish fashion, the bulk of the material was written by all four, working together at the Barn, often writing in a stream-of-consciousness style.

In a playful spin on Phish's tradition of musical costumes, the band debuted eight songs from the album on October 31, 2013 as the second set of their Halloween concert at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The original working title of the album was Wingsuit, but in May 2014 Phish announced that the album would be called Fuego. Ultimately, three songs included in the Halloween performance debut didn't make it onto the studio version: "Snow", "Amidst the Peals of Laughter", and "You Never Know". "Halfway to the Moon" made its live debut in 2010 and "Winterqueen" was debuted by Trey Anastasio Band in 2011, before Phish performed it for the first time at the 2013 Halloween show.

One track, "Waiting All Night", was released on NPR's website on May 14, 2014, along with a complete track listing of the album. A second song, "The Line", was released online for streaming on May 27, 2014, and a third, "555", was released on YouTube on June 12, 2014. On June 15, 2014, the entire album was made available to the public to stream online on NPR's website as a part of its "First Listen" series.

In Rolling Stone, Will Hermes wrote, "Let's say you wanted to write a Phish album in 2014.... Most important, you'd write optimistic songs that can be jammed all the way up to our depleted ozone in concert. Phish do all this on their 12th studio LP — struggling to transform the onstage magic into bits and bytes, and mostly nailing it.... Geek-funk grooves spaz-out merrily, and producer Bob Ezrin keeps it feeling live. Lyrics remain an Achilles' heel, but sometimes Phish hit profundity sideways.... "A hero's what I'm not," Anastasio sings ruefully, before spinning out another set of guitar lines that prove him exactly wrong."

On AllMusic, Fred Thomas said, "Instead of an overblown studio creation, Fuego instead finds the band sounding relaxed and connected, but also distinctly articulate in their often complex twists and turns. More than the smart production, Fuego is a standout in Phish's sometimes less-than-impressive studio catalog on the strengths of its ten stellar tracks, inspired tunes that share a loose thread as they bound between virtuosic playing, flirtations with gospel and funk, and the kind of eclectic rock jamming Phish have made their name on.... With sharp production and some of the better compositions Phish have managed in ages, Fuego ranks among their best studio albums, capturing strands of the frenetic, cartoonish, darkly cautionary, and open-hearted expressions that make their concerts such moving experiences, but which often get lost when the tape starts rolling."

On Consequence of Sound, Jake Cohen wrote, "... we must judge Fuego on its ability to stand alone as a work of studio art. On that merit, it has much to applaud. Phish wisely avoided trying to capture the live experience on wax, instead hiring the well-pedigreed classic rock producer Bob Ezrin (Lou Reed, Pink Floyd, Alice Cooper).... Like the compositions themselves, the brilliance of Ezrin’s work here is in the nuances.... Thankfully, this album's shortcomings are not due to a drying up of creativity or motivation.... Phish wrote most of these songs together, while the basic rhythms and progressions come directly from some of their best recent concert jams. Their democratic approach to composition signals a more mature band, while individual contributions from Gordon and McConnell are some of their strongest to date."

In Mountain Weekly News, Zach Jones said, "For over 30 years, Phish has risen from a college jam band in Vermont to one of the largest touring bands to date. Long heralded as the band that would replace the Grateful Dead, Phish has evolved as much more than a replacement band. They have dealt with their own ups and downs, highs and lows, and came out a much stronger, tighter band, which is evident on their latest release, Fuego."

The album debuted at number 7 on the Billboard 200 chart, with first-week sales of 32,000 copies in the United States.

Wikipedia.org
 

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