Maybe everyone could just stop releasing new music for a year or so? Can we do that? That way we can catch up with all the good shit that's been dropping at a rapid clip lately.
Released: July 12, 2024
Follow-up to: A Picture of Nectar, Week 136
32 years separates the Phish album we covered in Record Club and the newest Phish album. Whenever this happens in RC f/u, it's pretty obvious that the hook for the review is gonna default to "things sure are different!" And they are in this case too. Why wouldn't they be? ESPECIALLY if you're gonna underline this truth by naming your album something on-the-nose like Evolve, ya know what I mean?
I was a fan of A Picture of Nectar. It had some fun songs! In the time since we covered that one, I've also checked out 1996's Billy Breathes, and was significantly less sold on that one. I don't know what to tell you. I can't use the "they were evolving!" excuse for that album, because it only came out four years after Nectar. I think it was just because there were fewer hooks. Maybe Phish felt like they were taking themselves more seriously? Which is not something that suits them, in my opinion.
I was a fan of A Picture of Nectar. It had some fun songs! In the time since we covered that one, I've also checked out 1996's Billy Breathes, and was significantly less sold on that one. I don't know what to tell you. I can't use the "they were evolving!" excuse for that album, because it only came out four years after Nectar. I think it was just because there were fewer hooks. Maybe Phish felt like they were taking themselves more seriously? Which is not something that suits them, in my opinion.
Anyways, I'm listening to Evolve, a Phish album from 2024, very far away from the '90s, and I will say that I think it's a nice album, nice to listen to. Probably not something I'll revisit after today, but I think that if I were to go deep on it, I'd find the same appreciation that I did for A Picture of Nectar. Maybe.
The thing is, you can tell that Phish is attempting to record their sound as close to their live reputation as they can. A Picture of Nectar felt like a true studio effort, and it had muscle in that way. No such thing on Evolve, which includes all the stretched-out verbosity as what I assume I would hear at a Phish concert. They're just jamming, man. Which is fine, but I get the sense that this happens at the expense of songwriting. This is more of a "here's what we do well, and more of it."
Actually, maybe that's a good way to describe Evolve: a Greatest Hits compilation containing exactly zero hits, i.e. a comp designed to explain to you what Phish is all about, except this one is facing forward instead of backward. Having written pretty much everything I'll ever have to say about Phish culture in my previous review, I have nothing else to say about Evolve except: you'll like this if you like Phish.
GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5 (-1.0 from original review)
Released: May 2, 2025
Follow-up to: Morbid Stuff, Week 12
THE UNRAVELING OF PUPTHEBAND felt like the logical conclusion to the self-mythologizing that PUP had been trafficking in for what seemed like a good long while. I liked it, but maybe I liked the concept more than the execution, because I rarely find myself revisiting that one too often. And that's not even the album we covered in RC. That one would be Morbid Stuff, which was slightly less concept heavy, but still had interesting self-hating overtones. But I'd say that maybe the concept had run its course, and PUP were looking for something new this time around.
How fortunate (ironically, perhaps, though this band is a sucker for irony too) that frontman Stefan Babcock should suffer a rough breakup right around the time that the last story cycle was wrapping up. Here on Who Will Look After the Dogs?, the hatred is directed outward—at a scorned ex, at a world that seems unfair. This might seem like a pivot, thematically, but actually works really well as the next step in the process. First they hated themselves, and then they found that the only love they could find in a cruel world was within themselves the whole time. The gang vocals yell "the best revenge is living well" toward the end of the album, and it's a cliché that nevertheless feels incredibly poignant and well-earned for this crew.
As to the sounds of this album, I'll confess that they occasionally sound like PUP-by-numbers. The band is regarded as "consistent" in their songwriting, and maybe PUP is a band for whom that works to their detriment. I want PUP to try something new next time. There are hints of it in the last few songs—a renewed "woo!" or those aforementioned group vocals or the fat synths of the finale—but generally, they're sticking to what they know. Under the circumstances, I'll take it. Same ol' PUP is better than no PUP at all. Maybe after the healing is done, though, they can swerve further left.
GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5 (-0.5 from original review)
NEXT TIME: Tyler, the Creator dropped a new album a couple weeks ago, with very little notice. Had I known, I probably would've attempted to get around to reviewing his previous album, 2024's Chromakopia. So next week, I'm just gonna review both of them. DON'T TAP THE GLASS has been treating me well so far, if you're looking for a little preview of my review.
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