[rating=4.00]
Phish’s new album is appropriately titled for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that Joy finds the band relishing the challenge of recording their new songs.
The enthusiasm is evident right from the beginning, when on "Backwards Down the Number Line," a sprightly rocker with country tinges, Trey Anastasio sings as if in a hurry to get to his solo, which radiates an emotional heat new to his playing since the reunion. Immediately following, "Stealing Time From the Faulty Plan" is enough of a rumination on making up for lost time to suggest Joy may be a concept album, but neither the music nor the musicians get too cerebral.
The quartet plays with a loose abandon that leads logically to the knotty funk of "Sugar Shack," where, led by author Mike Gordon, the foursome display that rare sensation of musicians just reaching the point of nailing a new tune. The whimsical play of "Ocelot" effectively undercuts the solemnity of the more serious opening tunes, while "Kill Devil Falls" continues in a boogie-woogie mode. And the taut yet spacey atmosphere of "Light" nicely segues to Page McConnell’s "I’ve Been Around," a brief tongue-in cheek number that effectively presages the album’s most dramatic track, "Time Turns Elastic." The lyrical imagery of Anastasio’s here is slightly more flowery than that supplied by Tom Marshall elsewhere, but the words are less important than the colorful rhythmic and melodic changes through which the quartet maneuvers so deftly (if perhaps a bit too carefully).
If Joy ended there, the whole endeavor, from its quasi-cosmic cover art to the recurring reflections on aging and the passage of time, might seem pretentious. But during the course of more near-telepathic instrumental interplay during "Twenty Years Later," Phish revisit the most notable motifs of the preceding songs in an admirable act of collective self-restraint. It’s an appropriate conclusion to a deceptively intricate piece of work.
