Divided Sky

I often find myself blown away by the different ways Phish plays around with the structure of a song they’re creating. Layers are heaped and caressed upon one another, slight piano notes are flung at it, sometimes speeding towards the main melody in a taper, sometimes taking off from it, on startling tangents and short piercing incursions. It is always building, if not to a crescendo in the usual sense of the word, then towards a culmination point in faraway space, whizzing and sliding its way through. Suddenly, like in the glorious Divided Sky, this envelope of sound that’s careening tantalisingly forth comes crashing down, hitherto hidden cymbals with no semblance of control thrash about, instruments sound like they’re in the process of violent suicide… it all quite simply disintegrates into pieces.

And then this band does something that breaks your heart – they pick up some of these pieces, at seeming random, a ghost of a quaver here, an unlikely crotchet there, and make song out of it all over again.