Billy Breathes

10/15/1996 3:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Tim Stegall

It's almost too tempting to simply write "and the world yawns," turn it in and collect my 100 dollars. But that wouldn't do. For instance, you'd never understand the problems inherent in being Phish, or in listening to Phish. You'd snort it off as the grousing of another snottier-than-thou, punk-ass rock critic, shut down the monitor, go jack into the Nintendo... and that would be that.

Put it this way: Phish ain't a bad band, at least in the common sense of the term. They get written off as a mock- Dead for `90s collegiate idiots, stand-ins for the tie-dye nation to pacify themselves with `til Jerry gets it together enough to resurrect himself and even that is a completely off-base misunderstanding of the Phish Problem. Think about this: Steve Lillywhite, the architect behind that old `80s Ludwigs-in-a-canyon drum sound on U2 and Simple Minds records, co-produced Billy Breathes. The band performs an annual show where they cover some classic record or other in its entirety; recent selections have included Quadrophenia and the Talking Heads' Remain In Light. In other words, Phish is into enough good stuff that they should know better, but have somehow missed the point.

And it's not that Phish suck in any sort of traditional manner, either. They play well, are obviously talented and tasteful and know how to write a song. And here lies the problem: Just because you've got talent and good instincts doesn't mean you necessarily have anything worthwhile to offer. Of course, the hordes of Phish-Heads who've bought enough Phish product to make Phish gold-selling recording artists will ignore any of this and muse long and hard about the band's abilities and capacity to "jam, maaaannn," possibly nudging Phish that much closer to platinum status. Meantime, anybody who's been wondering whatever happened to Steve Lillywhite now has their answer: He lost his hearing.