Breaking the hipster mythology that looms over his band, Vampire Weekend drummer Chris Thomson recently sang his praises of Phish's new album, Fuego (which drops today) in a review for The Talkhouse Music.
Thomson does a pretty great job expressing his love for this generation's perennial jam band with a number of devotion-proving anecdotes like this opener:
"I once responded to a $1,000 cash offer for my ticket to their NYE ’02 show with a terse yet decisive, 'No fucking way, bro.' I once drove 12 hours to see a weekend of Phish shows in northern Maine and competed in the attendant Runaway Jim 5K for a chance to get onstage. I still know what YEM, PYITE, TMWSIY and DWD are acronyms for and who Jeff Holdsworth is. I’ve seen 25-30 Phish shows in the last 15 years. And, to a lot of people, that still makes me a newbie who doesn’t know shit."
It's a nice rundown of the new album that strays from being all-too-preachy about a band that's way too easy to be all-too-preachy about, or conversely, hate on for all the wrong, superficial reasons. In the end, he's just a 30-something white dude, like many 30-something white dudes, who discovered Phish and clung to the culture of being one of the band's "followers" before that term took on new meaning with the advent of social media.
Read the whole thing over at The Talkhouse, where you can find actually find a bunch of articles written by musicians reviewing the works of other musicians. Hello, "Lou Reed Talks Kanye West's Yeezus," goodbye any semblance of productivity today...