Review: Phish accomplishes something so impressive in San Francisco

From the moment the band took the stage on Friday (April 18) to kick off its spring tour in Seattle until it waved goodbye to fans in San Francisco on Wednesday (April 23) night, Phish never played the same song twice.

That’s five shows at three different venues totaling some 15 hours in music and staggering 88 songs performed — with not one single repeat.

Amazing.

No wonder Phans adore going to multiple Phish shows, none of which ever boast the same setlist. The depth of this group’s concert repertoire is beyond impressive and its all made possible by the ability of Phish to turn any given song into a massive highlight on any given night. That’s the power of improvisational music on full display.

Having spent a goodly amount of time peddling more recent material during the first four nights of the tour — with pretty much uniformly excellent results — Phish was in full-on greatest-hits oldies mode during the second of two sold-out nights at the Bill Graham Civic. (Read our review of Night 1 here.)

Of course, “greatest hits” is an odd choice of words to use in conjunction with Phish, given that the Vermont jam band —  featuring Trey Anastasio on guitar and lead vocals, Mike Gordon on bass, Jon Fishman on drums and Page McConnell on keys — really has none in the traditional sense (i.e., sales numbers, radio play). But we’re using term to mean fan favorites oldies, which, in this case, we’ll define as anything that came on or before 2000’s “Farmhouse.”

These 2025 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominees — who one day prior had learned that they had officially crushed the Fan Vote over the likes of Mariah Carey, Oasis, White Stripes and Oasis — were swinging for the fences from the moment they took the stage right after 8 p.m., opening with a glistening 12-minute “Simple” that was anything but and then jamming right into a muscular “Punch You In the Eye,” the funk-driven “Gumbo” and the far-reaching “Reba.”

Gordon and Anastasio did their little synchronized dance routines during “Punch You In the Eye,” then combined with Fishman and McConnell to take “Gumbo” into a mellow and spacey orbit. Anastasio delivered some truly transcendent guitar work during the nearly 14-minute version of “Reba,” which closed with its regular whistle jam.

Those four songs alone stretched nearly 50 minutes of stage time.

Stopping briefly for the relative new song “The Well” (from Phish’s excellent latest disc, “Evolve”), the group ventured right back into fan favorite territory and closed the roughly 75-minute first set with the explosive doubleheader of “David Bowie” and “Character Zero.”

After the 35-or-so minute break, Phish was back in action — benefitting from the best light show in the business — and ignited the second set with a fiery “Sample In the Jar” and before rambling into “Tweezer” territory. The latter had everyone in the house buzzing with the hope that the band would then choose to include the song’s famed resolution — “Tweezer Reprise,” aka the Phish fanbase’s most widely cherished song — in the encore.

Yet, the original “Tweezer” itself was nothing to sneeze at — filled with some of the most inspired jamming of the night and clocking in at just over a half an hour all by its lonesome.

The group’s popular cover of the Talking Heads’ “Crosseyed and Painless” was sandwiched by the Anastasio solo cut “Lonely Trip” and the “Evolve” number “Pillow Jets,” nicely setting up a nearly 20-minute “You Enjoy Myself” to close the second set.

Phish then returned to finish up the show — and the San Francisco stand — with a two-song encore. No, it didn’t include “Tweezer Reprise” (Phans will most likely have wait until this weekend’s three Hollywood Bowl shows for that). Instead, it kicked off with mesmerizingly beautiful “Velvet Sea” and then changed course 180-degrees for a triumphant finale with the high-energy rocker “First Tube.”

Setlist:

1. “Simple”2. “Punch You in the Eye”3. “Gumbo”4. “Reba”5. “The Well”6. “David Bowie”7. “Character Zero”Set 2:8. “Sample in a Jar”9. “Tweezer”10. “Lonely Trip”11. “Crosseyed and Painless”12. “Pillow Jets”13. “You Enjoy Myself”Encore:14. “Wading in the Velvet Sea”15. “First Tube”