Matthew Sweet Toronto 2024
Kerby Kolpack
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The theme ended up being a clever one. Playing on the name of the venue, and breaking down the thread of continuity to encompass complete shows riffing on land (lithosphere), water (hydrosphere), air (atmosphere), and life (biosphere), the band pulled off a high concept presentation without beating that concept into the ground. The visual accompaniment mirrored these themes, as did - believe it or not - the improvisational jams, in a vibey, impressionistic manner.
Abundant credit is due to the creative team, including co-creative directors Abigail Rosen Holmes and Jean-Baptise Hardoin of Moment Factory, who worked closely with veteran Phish lighting designer Chris Kuroda to create a visual environment that was stunningly imaginative and packed a visceral wallop - one that I felt even while streaming the shows from 2,500 miles away.
This was my first trip to Electric City, the former site of the Tralf, for personal reasons revolving around a sense of loyalty I feel to long-serving music venues in the region and concerns over what the Buffalo concert market will bear.
Phish performed four consecutive 3-plus hour gigs at the Sphere in Las Vegas on April 18, 19, 20, and 21, and I don\u2019t exist within a tax bracket that would make attending the shows in person anything other than a complete pipe dream, so I purchased live streams for all 4 shows, through LivePhish.com.
The whole experience was both mind-blowing and, in my view, game-changing. And in so many ways, it felt like these four nights represented Phish fulfilling its destiny as the world\u2019s biggest, weirdest, and most fiercely idiosyncratic \u2018underground\u2019 band. A band that never had a radio hit, or a hit by any other name. A band that not only never made concessions to the mainstream, but in fact, has spent the last 40 years acting as if the mainstream doesn\u2019t even exist.
Phish has created its own universe. And the Sphere shows welcomed all of us into that universe in a truly immersive way, one that married light, sound, true improvisation, virtuosity, playfulness, theatricality, and yeah, a whole lotta trippy \u2018Oh my god, I\u2019m freaking out!\u2019 moments.
It\u2019s true that the face-melting audio-visual capabilities of the Sphere were first explored by U2, who did a late 2023/early 2024 run of 40 shows at the Sphere, and the reaction from fans and critics seemed to be unanimously positive. However, U2 played the same show (or very close to it) on every one of those 40 nights, which meant that the visual cues remained consistent throughout their run. That\u2019s more than understandable, when you\u2019re taking on a venture of this magnitude, with so many potential train-wrecks waiting around every bend.
Phish had their own ideas, however. The band spent a year planning for the Sphere, after finally settling on a thematic thread that would carry throughout the 4-night run - a run that would include precisely zero repeated songs, and visual accompaniment that responded in real -time to the band\u2019s improvisational sojourns. All four nights would be unique.
Phish could\u2019ve extended this Sphere run to dozens of shows and sold them all out, quite likely. But that would\u2019ve meant compromising the ethos, repeating songs, and turning the whole thing into something more \u2018Vegas-y.\u2019 It\u2019s a testament to the band\u2019d integrity that they didn\u2019t.
Speaking of musicians hell-bent marching to the beat of their own drum, Todd Rundgren has spent his entire career doing exactly that. Along the way, he\u2019s had some accidental hit singles, all of which urged him to perform drastic artistic pivots immediately thereafter, in his stubborn insistence on creating a moving target and avoiding being pigeon-holed.
Rundgren\u2019s show at the beautiful Riviera Theatre in North Tonawanda was a perfect exemplar of this dichotomy. Rundgren and his stellar band - drummer Prairie Prince, bassist/vocalist Kasim Sulton, saxophonist/keyboardist/vocalist Bobby Strickland, keyboardist Gil Assayas, guitarist/vocalist Bruce McDaniel - wren\u2019t exactly taking a victory lap for nostalgia\u2019s sake, nor were they eager to \u201Cplay the hits.\u201D Instead, we were offered a brilliantly curated tour through Rundgren\u2019s incredibly deep and stylistically diverse catalog, with plenty of emphasis on relatively recent fare.
I first experienced Rundgren in concert at the Ritz in New York City, on his Nearly Human tour of 1989. I\u2019ve seen pretty much every tour since, and they\u2019ve run the gamut from power trio to one-man electronic dance music shows, prog-rock ensemble pieces, and industrial-tinged psychedelia.
The Riviera Theatre show numbers among my favorites of the several dozen Rundgren shows I\u2019ve been lucky enough to catch. At 75, Rundgren\u2019s voice is not quite as elastic as it once was, but his soulfulness and commitment to the melodies remains undiminished, and the vocal blend with longtime collaborator Karim Sulton and backing singers Strickland and McDaniel served the material incredibly well. I was truly moved.
I\u2019ve loved this band\u2019s blend of progressive metal, Beatle-esque 3-part vocal harmonies, gospel, R&B and funk since I first heard their 1990 album Faith Hope Love. Sadly, the band hasn\u2019t played Buffalo since 2005, and the strength of their most recent album, Three Sides of One suggested that a road-trip to Toronto was in order.
The band was as awesome as ever, the setlist was smartly assembled, with a healthy dose of the excellent new album, and the place was packed to the brim with folks who were very obviously fellow King\u2019s X maniacs.
King\u2019s X is a band that is revered for its vocal harmonies. Those harmonies were virtually unintelligible for more than half of the show. Virtuoso guitarist Ty Tabor was buried in the mix, for the most part. And Dug Pinnick\u2019s bass was so loud that it became close to impossible to define the tonality of the notes he was playing.
This was not a question of the band\u2019s stage volume being too loud - it wasn\u2019t. It was all down to the front-of-house mix. Perhaps the Axis is a tough room to mix in. I\u2019ve never seen another show there, so I have nothing to compare it to. Regardless, the whole thing was pretty inexcusable.
Of course, like everyone else, I\u2019m a bit of a hypocrite, and the chance to catch Matthew Sweet in concert - for the first time, believe it or not - pushed ideas of personal integrity to the side. I\u2019m a power-pop fanatic, when push comes to shove.
Over the course of 90 minutes, Sweet and his band - guitarist John Moreland, rhythm guitarist Adrian Carter, bassist Paul Chastain and Bangles drummer Debbi Peterson - reminded me why I keep returning to now-classic albums like Girlfiriend, Altered Beast (my favorite) and 100% Fun, tunes from which comprised the majority of Sweet\u2019s show. These are simply timeless slabs of sugar-sweet, deeply melodic power-pop, and at the Electric City show, they were augmented by more recent Sweet fare, including a stellar \u2018Stars Explode,\u2019 from 2021\u2019s Catspaw, and \u2018Pretty Please,\u2019 from 2017\u2019s Tomorrow Forever.
Of particular note was the playing of guitarist Moremen, who dazzled throughout with wonderfully angular, jagged solos that delighted in the unexpected - no small feat, when you consider the fact that the legendary likes of Robert Quine, Richard Lloyd and Ivan Julian have filled the lead guitarist\u2019s role in Sweet\u2019s bands of the past.
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