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Phish: Round Room

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Elektra Records
Released: 2002.12.10
Time:
 77:51
Category: Alternative Rock
Producer(s): Bryce Goggin
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.phish.com
Appears with: Trey Anastasio
Purchase date: 2012
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Pebbles and Marbles (Anastasio/Marshall) - 11:39
[2] Anything But Me (Anastasio/Herman/Marshall) - 4:30
[3] Round Room (Gordon/Linitz) - 4:13
[4] Mexican Cousin (Anastasio/Marshall) - 3:16
[5] Friday (Anastasio/Herman/Marshall) - 6:31
[6] Seven Below (Anastasio/Marshall) - 8:27
[7] Mock Song (Gordon) - 4:29
[8] 46 Days (Anastasio) - 6:15
[9] All of These Dreams (Anastasio/Herman/Marshall) - 4:08
[10] Walls of the Cave (Anastasio/Marshall) - 9:59
[11] Thunderhead (Anastasio/Marshall) - 3:19
[12] Waves (Anastasio/Herman/Marshall) - 11:05

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


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

Bryce Goggin  - Producer, Engineer
Peter J. Carini - Engineer
Fred Kevorkian - Mastering
Nicholas Marantz - Mixing Assistant
Adam Sacks - Mixing Assistant
Jason Colton - Design
David Barron - Photography
Kevin Hoffman - Photography
Paul Languedoc - Production Assistant, Technical Assistance
Kevin Monty - Production Assistant, Technical Assistance
Rob O'Dea - Production Assistant, Technical Assistance
Brad Sands - Production Assistant, Technical Assistance
Kevin Shapiro - Production Assistant, Technical Assistance

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


Recorded in October 5, 6, 18, 19, 2002, The Barn, Vermont.



Phish reunited unexpectedly late in the summer of 2002. It was a bit of a shock, since their announced hiatus of 2000 seemed at least semi-permanent, yet this didn't have the vibe of a cash-in, even if their respective solo projects of the early 2000s didn't make many waves. The impromptu reunion felt spontaneous, as if the band simply felt like playing again. Certainly, the resulting album, Round Room, feels ramshackle, laid-back, and haphazard. Released mere months after its recording, it doesn't so much sound haphazard as it does unfinished, as if you're eavesdropping on a band rehearsal or even a writing session. Apart from the lovely, understated Farmhouse, Phish albums always meander, so it's nothing new that the focus is fuzzy on Round Room. What's weird is that there's very little shape to the songs. Often, only a bare sketch of a song is discernible, and even those are never played as if that sketch is final. Which all makes for kind of a murky listen and certainly not the cash-in crossover that a publicized reunion of a cult favorite could have been. Unfortunately, it's not particularly interesting, either, since it lacks the spirit of their live improvisations or, say, the layered ambitions of Trey Anastasio's excellent solo album of 2002. It is intermittently fascinating, particularly because this is as unvarnished as any album by a major artist, but instead of revealing a new side of Phish, it just sounds incomplete. Although this is kind of a disappointment, it's also kind of admirable because the band isn't afraid to work out the kinks in public, and it has enough intriguing ideas scattered throughout to suggest that now that this is out of their system, they have a better album ahead of them.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine - All Music Guide



The first two minutes of Round Room lift the curtain on what sounds like a brand-new Phish. The pulse of the opening track, an eleven-minute epic called "Pebbles and Marbles," is tapped out on cymbals, a code of skittering and splashing that sounds almost like a swing tune. It's supremely loose music, all green lights on the straightaway, and as keyboardist Page McConnell dances through a Vince Guaraldi-style solo, you can't help but think: That two-year hiatus did these guys good. We're traveling a different road. Can't wait to see where it goes.

Then Trey Anastasio begins to sing. And suddenly, with whiplash force, the new vistas vanish and we're yanked back into the phantasmagoric world of Phishspeak, circa 1995 — that shadowy realm where everything has triple meanings and the words are too cumbersome for the elegant music that carries them. It's all here: Tom Robbins-ish non sequiturs, ostentatious pronouncements, Zen riddles. "Pebbles and marbles like words from a friend," sings Anastasio in a coarse voice that often strays from the pitch. "Make us hold tight but are lost in the end." Oh, the heaviosity!

Anastasio, ever the soldier, rides the conceit of "Pebbles and Marbles," all the while sounding like he's determined to break through to something better. He grinds out ferocious double-time rhythm-guitar chords as he leans into the song's hook, and by the halfway point he's wound the thing up to a full gallop and it's interesting again. Though the vocals reappear from time to time, the song's second half is mostly instrumental, and it's a journey markedly different from the frictionless guitar-star hyperglide that made some Phish shows seem perfunctory. This time, nobody sits at center stage — Anastasio tosses out some melodies, but he's also cultivating dark, droning chords that ooze menacingly in the background. McConnell — once Mr. Unobtrusive — jabs and thrashes and pounds out frightening chords that have a freakish bipolar character — Keith Emerson coming through one hand, Thelonious Monk the other.

There are five extended adventures on Round Room, and while they're each unique compositionally, all of them are compelling for the same reason: These guys are actually listening and responding to one another. Gone is the cruise-control comportment of their occasional bad gigs, their overreliance on a riveting groove. In its place is the collective pursuit of upheaval: After spending two years doing other things, playing music in un-Phishlike settings, the four musicians appear newly dedicated to changing the very temperature of their interactions. They're baiting one another, throwing down challenges, chasing gnarled conversations that don't resolve neatly, looking for new levels of engagement. Their exchanges transform the ordinary organ-funk pulse of "46 Days" into a lacerating workout, elevate "Seven Below" to a sublime, impossibly fluid rhythm, and are at the heart of the cresting peaks that define "Waves." The album also includes several disarmingly beautiful miniatures, including the idyllic Grateful Dead-ish gospel waltz "All of These Dreams" and the hushed "Thunderhead," which finds Anastasio lamenting, "I need a new way to express myself."

He found it on Round Room, which, according to Phish lore, was born immediately after the band members ended their two-year break in October. They reconvened for two weeks to rehearse new music — Anastasio wrote ten of the songs, with help from his lyric generator, Tom Marshall; bassist Mike Gordon wrote the other two — and then repaired to their studio in a barn outside Bur-lington, Vermont.

The sessions were decidedly live, sometimes scruffy and not quite pristine audiowise (it's possible to hear the piano pedals squeaking during the intro of the magnificent "Walls of the Cave"). But you can hear why they made these rehearsals the album: Virtually everything on these seventy-eight minutes breathes with an anxious, edge-of-the-seat intensity that's missing from their previous studio efforts. Phish on record may never approach the energy of their live shows. But on Round Room, they're doing more than jabbering and jamming — they're sounding happy to be working together, and that allows them to reach truly new places. For that, you can forgive them a couple of Zen riddles.

Tom Moon December 30, 2002
RollingStone.com



After the release of Farmhouse, Phish took a two-year break during which the Vermont jam band released a slew of live albums and splintered into several side projects: Singer-guitarist Trey Anastasio made a solo disc and recorded with Oysterhead, his all-star outfit with former Primus bassist Les Claypool and former Police drummer Stewart Copeland; bassist Mike Gordon collaborated with Leo Kottke and made a movie about Gov't Mule; drummer Jon Fishman made an album with Pork Tornado; and keyboardist Page McConnell released an album as Vida Blue. Despite anxiety that the separation may have disrupted the band's raw chemistry, when the members of Phish regrouped in the studio under the pretense of rehearsing for a New Year's Eve show they walked out with this album four days later. Clocking in just past the 78-minute mark, Round Room is looser and more relaxed than its predecessor. Although stately, spiraling songwriting remains at the fore, there is a charming tossed-off air to Gordon's "Mock Song" ("Penny, thistle, cell phone, blow / Reap what you sow," goes one verse) and Anastasio's "Thunderhead" ("I need a new way to express myself so you don't need to guess"). More encouraging still, the weaving guitars and chugging rhythms mark another step closer to capturing Phish's live prowess on tape.

Aidin Vaziri - Amazon.com



Round Room is the ninth official studio album by the American rock band Phish, released on December 10, 2002, by Elektra Records. The album was recorded and released in the lead up to Phish's reunion concert on New Year's Eve 2002 at Madison Square Garden, which marked the end of the band's two-and-a-half year break.

As with previous Phish albums, the songs originated in collaborative writing sessions between frontman Trey Anastasio and lyricist Tom Marshall (with two songs contributed by bass guitarist Mike Gordon). Round Room is unique, however, in that the final tracks were taken from the band's unedited rehearsal sessions at The Barn, Anastasio's studio in Vermont. Rolling Stone notes that this approach gives the album a "decidedly live" feeling, and "breathes with an anxious, edge-of-the-seat intensity that's missing from their previous studio efforts." Though largely positive, the review criticizes Anastasio's singing and the "Phishspeak" quality of the lyrics.

Phish appeared on TV twice before their official return to the stage on New Year's Eve 2002. "46 Days" was debuted live on the December 14, 2002, episode of Saturday Night Live, and "All of These Dreams" debuted five days later on the Late Show with David Letterman.

About a week after the release of Round Room, Phish recorded an impromptu jam session in a studio in New York City, excerpts of which were later scheduled for release as The Victor Disc. However, this instrumental album has not yet been officially released.

Wikipedia.org
 

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