"Does anyone know what the term moiré means?" Mike Gordon quizzed the audience early on during last night's sold-out show at Webster Hall. "It's a pattern that's created when, say, two screens are placed on top of each other to create a third pattern," Gordon explained. ("Does anyone know what a moray eel is?" he later asked, rhetorically.) On one level Gordon—who's best known for the three decades he's spent playing bass in Phish—was referring to three large moiré light boxes onstage, but he might also have been referring to his passion for pushing a rock show into something greater than the sum of its parts.
This "third pattern" concept was literalized during the second set with a surprise burst of audience participation, when a drum machine stretching the length of the stage suddenly lit up with white light like a piano's ivories. The strange device was never fully explained, but audience members up front quickly realized that by tapping the illuminated panels, they could add their pattern to what Gordon's quintet was laying down. It was weird, it was neat, it was fun, it was pure Mike Gordon:
Webster Hall was the second stop on Gordon's national tour in support of his fourth solo album, Overstep, a reggae-dusted collection of uptempo tunes packed with eclectic instruments, very danceable grooves, and vivid lyrics that sometimes sound surprisingly personal, at least by Gordon's standards. Delivered live, the tunes are largely amiable, if occasionally veering a little too close to Adult Contemporary Dad Rock territory for my taste. Gordon's collaborator on the album, Scott Murawski, is a talented, dexterous guitarist, but there's sometimes something a tad vanilla and button-down about his playing. Ironically, I found his sound more appealing when he switched over to a small acoustic bass.
That said, the quintet—keyboards, drums, bass, guitar, and percussion—found the pocket consistently throughout two hour-plus sets, meshing into funky, percussive grooves that had the packed room bouncing in unison. Highlights fell mostly in the second set, including a bust-out of Phish prog rock rarity "Spock's Brain"; a dense, slow-building, and ultimately gratifying "555"; and a transporting "Long Black Line," which found the group improvising with remarkable cohesiveness for what was just their second tour to date. Gordon and Murawski's illuminated guitar and bass were pretty far out, too.
It'll be interesting to see how they've grown into the new material when the tour concludes in Gordon's hometown of Burlington, Vermont next month. But it's clear they're largely enjoying themselves already, and it's a trip to see Gordon, who for many years appeared to be the most reserved member of Phish, fronting his own band and enjoying a mid-career blossoming of creativity. Most multi-millionaire rock stars pushing 50 aren't bouncing up and down in a nightclub playing brand new material on an turquoise-blue illuminated bass, but of course Gordon, just like his Phish bandmates, was never like the others.
