Phish staged perhaps their smallest gig in decades as they packed into a cubicle for NPR’s latest Tiny Desk concert. Over the course of five songs and 35 minutes, the legendary jam band delivered a performance that spanned their decades-long discography, from the title track of their just-released album Evolve to “You Enjoy Myself,” a live favorite first featured on the band’s 1988 debut LP Junta (and guitarist Trey Anastasio’s personal pick for the potential last-ever-song played by Phish, as he recently told Rolling Stone ). “When we started the band, we used to practice in a room exactly this size.
.. it was probably smaller,” Anastasio said during the Tiny Desk gig, which opened with a rendition of “Sigma Oasis” that featured a musical nod to NPR’s All Things Considered theme.
The band then followed with “Evolve” and the prog-rock epic “You Enjoy Myself,” complete with the synchronized trampolining and a vocal jam that’s a staple of the band’s performances. After those three songs and 25 minutes, the Tiny Desk concert ended, and credits rolled..
. but in true Phish fashion, the band reemerged for an encore, playing two of their most popular quasi-hits ( even though they admittedly have no hits ), “Sample in a Jar” and “Chalk Dust Torture.” The quartet will return to playing to a much, much larger audience when their summer kicks off Friday with the first of three shows at Mansfield, Massachusetts’ Xfinity Center.
The trek, which inc.