JUNTA

Whether or not you think that Phish's Junta is a progressive rock album, you cannot deny that it is not an amazing piece of conceptual material. Spanning across the Phish discography there have always been bumps on the road saying whether or not Phish is really 'prog'. Many people restrict them to simply having progressive moments in their music; especially when it comes to tracks on Junta and Rift. Not only is Junta prog, but it also was the turning point of the 90's. And thus the 90's spawned the Phish uprising.

Trey Anastasio and the folks tend to stick around the same line of ten minute or longer pieces to add desired effect when it needs to be done. Being a jam band, they obviously are able to pull these off very well, leaving the shorter tracks in the dust albeit several spaces behind. One track that comes to mind is my personal favorite, 'The Divided Sky'. Originally written for Phish's 1983 The White Tape demo, I have stated before that I wished they could extended this song because of it's large amount of potential. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why this album was enjoyable to me, just because of this one song. But alas, a review does not simply skate over one song and be done. No, there are several other spectacular songs to mention on here, including 'David Bowie' (named after the 60/70's experimental rock singer/songwriter), which is a ten minute long little piece with some interesting sound effects thrown into an overall progressive rock environment to add a unique twist on the entire thing. 'Fluffhead' is a jazzier, and I suppose a less progressive shorter track that follows up Bowie. Using more non- nonsensical a Capella lyrics, the band conveys what they abundantly did in their future works. Some backround guitar slides can get slightly annoying but they are, in the end, easy to ignore.

The rest of the album is not as progressive as these few tracks, but if you are a fan of the jazzier Phish (which I happen to be just as much as the proggy side of them), then I highly suggest this entire release to you. As many people would suggest and have outright said, this release is necessary for any easygoing prog fan.