LAWN BOY

Phish's fourth album (second officially released) is just as good as their previous, albeit shorter. Every song here is excellent. The Squirming Coil is an underrated gem of progressive music, the build up and decent is quite beautiful.

Reba is probaby my favorite on the album. Like many Phish songs, it starts off sounding like a joke song with wacky, but eventually turns into a frantic instrumental with complex time and key changes. It builds in speed until it suddenly drops in tempo and slowly rebuilds into a soaring guitar solo. The song abruptly stops and drops back into the goofy chorus that you had almost forgotten about. Its amazing how they manage to change moods like that all in one song. Phish were masters of gradually making a song unrecognizeable through their extended instrumentals.

The rest of the album is also great. There are more impressive instrumentals as well as goofy fun songs throughout. Bouncing Around The Room was one of their more accessable songs, and one of the few Phish songs you'd hear on the radio from time to time. Despite its accessable nature, it's still quite progressive, containing many of the buildups and complex instrumental sections they were known for, only on a much smaller scale.

This is definitely an essential Phish album, and probably a good starting point since the double disced Junta may be too much to take on first listen.