Goose Gives The Met Philadelphia A Saturday Night Liftoff (SHOW REVIEW)

Photo Credit: Pooneh Ghana

Once you get it, you can’t forget it.”

Robbie Robertson’s lyric, from The Band’s iconic 1970 track “The W.S. Wolcott Medicine Show”, a song which has often been interpreted as an allegorical commentary on the music business as a whole, as well as the slippery-slope-laden lifestyle that accompanies being a rock star, has apparently found new meaning thanks to jam band darlings Goose.   

The Connecticut-based quintet’s recent surge in popularity has been well documented by media outlets from Rolling Stone to The Boston Globe, and for good reason. Only a few years removed from playing clubs and bars, oftentimes as an opening act performing for a few dozen patrons, the band now find themselves selling out some of the most revered venues from coast to coast. More and more, people are starting to “get it”. 

To put things in perspective, the group’s current spring tour features several multi-night stops, mostly at 2000-4000 person capacity theaters, all of which sold out within days or hours of going on sale. The bar is raised even higher later this year with a slew of upcoming summer and fall dates that include visits to cavernous amphitheaters, including Red Rocks and SPAC in Saratoga Springs, NY, in addition to a half dozen or so headlining appearances at outdoor summer festivals.

That said, this level of popularity is not necessarily unheard of in the highly scrutinized genre. After all, veteran jam bands such as Widespread Panic and The String Cheese Incident have achieved comparable levels of acclaim, particularly in the late nineties and early aughts, with both groups playing (and continuing to play) similarly-sized theaters along with the occasional arena or amphitheater, in addition to Panic garnering some national television exposure thanks to a trio of appearances on Late Night with Conan O’Brien from 1995-1998. 

Since then, however, the cupboards have remained relatively bare. Though the modern jamband-scene’s numbers continue to increase at a seemingly exponential rate (and dangerously close to the point of over-saturation), bands like Spafford, Twiddle, and Pigeons Playing Ping Pong have been unable to separate themselves from the rest of the pack. And while no jam band will likely ever again attain the same insane attendance figures and mainstream crossover appeal as Phish and The Grateful Dead, there’s no doubt that Goose has achieved a level of popularity not seen in over twenty years.

Riding that wave of momentum, Goose wrapped up a two-night run at The Met Philadelphia with a memorable performance, delivering a pair of sets rife with original material both new and old, along with a few rousing covers. 

Following up a somewhat uneven Friday exhibition, which featured a few standout moments but didn’t do much to move the needle overall, the group kicked things off shortly before nine on Saturday March 25th with “Dr. Darkness”, a moody original from guitarist Rick Mitarotonda that sounds surprisingly mature and developed for a song that made its live debut just over a year ago before launching into fan-favorite “Yeti”. 

As is the case with several of multi-instrumentalist Peter Anspach’s compositions, “Yeti”, with its nonsensical lyrics and four-on-the-floor groove, serves up a distinctly more “jam band vibe” than many of Mitarotonda’s more realized originals that tend to skew slightly towards the indie side of the spectrum. However, that musical dichotomy is essential to their success as it helps maintain a certain level of freshness and unpredictability during their live performances. 

The first of many of the evening’s genuine highlights occurred halfway through the opening set when Mitarotonda and Anspach, along with bassist Trevor Weekz, drummer Ben Atkind and percussionist Jeff Arevalo, stretched “Borne” to just shy of the thirty-minute mark. 

While the quicker tempo of “Borne’s” live arrangement may not allow the song to breathe quite as well as it does on the group’s critically-acclaimed 2022 studio effort, Dripfield, the ensuing jam was a truly impressive representation of group improv. A patient build from the entire ensemble led to a series of intense peaks fueled by Mitarotonda’s trademark tension-and-release-filled guitar runs before melting into an atmospheric dreamscape that ultimately segued into a faithful interpretation of “The W.S. Wolcott Medicine Show”, introspective lyrics and all. 

Energy levels remained high with “Butter Rum”, an island-tinged original that saw Anspach perform double-duty on both guitar and keys and featured some endearing call-and-response moments between band and audience before another round of searing guitar solos. 

The opening stanza came to a dramatic conclusion after nearly eighty minutes with the indie-soaked strains of “Seekers on the Ridge (Parts I & II)”, which counts as one of Mitarotonda’s strongest compositional efforts thanks to its unique arrangement, poetic lyrics and haunting refrain.

After a brief intermission, the band picked up right where they left off with a pair of rockers, “Same Old Shenanigans”, from their 2021 studio album Shenanigans Nite Club, as well as a new Mitarotonda tune, “Lead Up”, which appeared for just the second time after its live debut during Goose’s five-night run at New York’s Capitol Theatre a few weeks prior.

“So Ready”, another track from Shenanigans Nite Club and one of the band’s oldest and most-played songs, featured some respectably funky clavichord work from Anspach before Mitarotonda capped things off with yet another high-energy jam that ended with a broken guitar string and elicited an enthusiastic “Holy Moly, Rick!” from the keyboardist.  

An extended take on “Rosewood Heart”, with its Bruce Hornsby-infused piano charts and some of the most frenetic guitar runs of the evening, preceded a set-closing version of “Dripfield” which, along with an anthemic chorus, included one final mind-bending jam that contained brief elements of The Grateful Dead’s “The Eleven”. 

With just a few minutes to spare prior to the venue’s midnight curfew, the band tore through an expedited rendition of Bobby “Blue” Bland’s “Turn On Your Love Light”, along with a quick tease of Johnny Rivers’ “Secret Agent Man”, before ushering out the buzzed revelers into the streets of Philadelphia. 

Goose Setlist Metropolitan Opera House, Philadelphia, PA, USA, Spring Tour 2023

 

 

Related Content

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Posts

New to Glide

Keep up-to-date with Glide

Twitter