Phish, “Evolve.”

Jam band Phish has been around a really long time. “As the band has evolved and the world has evolved, the fanbase has evolved with it,” Vulture wrote in 2019.

The comment was prescient. but this isn’t about the evolution of a fanbase (a massive one) or the world that fanbase inhabits. Rather, it’s how Phish’s latest album, Evolve, portrays the band’s current state. Does the band even know?

Evolve opens with “Hey Stranger,” a track that, for some reason feels as aggressive as anything Phish has ever made. The song begins like a hard knock on an old wooden door, tinted with fun wobbly sound effects and driven by a rising percussive beat.

But wait. Let’s take a minute to meditate on that in 2024, Phish has a new studio album, its 15th? Can we remind ourselves that the band that began in Vermont in 1983 covering Grateful Dead songs continues to sell out venues across the country – most recently Sphere in Vegas – while headlining and hosting four-day music festivals?

Whatever we say about Evolve, and there is quite a bit to say, all the recordings are destined to serve as jumping off points for the live shows. The associated concert-going experience has long been the allure of Phish; each of the 12 songs on Evolve is just a start.
Now, to the songs.

“Jam band album” seems too easy. “Hey Stranger” begins with a declaration and ends with a plea, “Mercy.” One interpretation of this arc lends itself toward nostalgia. Doesn’t “Lonely Trip” almost feel like a follow up to 1998 song “Wading in the Velvet Sea?”
Another is that it’s autobiographical.

“First came the light, then came the sound, then came the worlds that could never slow down,” Trey Anastasio sings on the title track.
And still another is that Evolve serves as a testament to not only a life journey, but a lyrical one.

Within that testament we have songs like “Oblivion,” “Human Nature” and “Pillow Jets” that are more in line with what we might expect from a Phish album. Listening to them, you can already see the oversized beach ball making its way through the general admission audience, bobbing up and down like the Andrea Gail in “The Perfect Storm.”

Then there are the songs that feel like they’re plucked from a variety of musical inspirations. Parts of “Life Saving Gun” are almost reminiscent of Jimi Hendrix’s Band of Gypsies classic “Machine Gun” while the early harmonies of “Ether Edge” lead you on sort of a Simon-and-Garfunkel-like path. “Valdese,” a beautiful song, comes across like an ode to Grateful Dead circa American Beauty or Workingman’s Dead era; a good campfire song that grows into a soaring bonfire.

Whatever it is that Phish is telling listeners on Evolve – however and wherever you may want to interpret it – is, and should be, ambiguous. The mood, however, seems to be relatively straightforward: to linger with the band for a moment. A message that seems consistent with Phish from its beginning.

“Evolve” is the perfect word for both the listening experience of this collection of songs as well as what sort of long-term implication this album may be hinting at. I don’t think Phish is anywhere near retirement. If anyone ever figures out Telomere Theory or biological immortality, we could see another century and 15 albums of this beloved Vermont act.

Follow Jesse Herwitz at Twitter.com/JesseHerwitz and Instagram.com/JesseHerwitz.