Happy 25th Anniversary to Phish’s sixth studio album Billy Breathes, originally released October 15, 1996.
When Phish go on tour, they become like a sports team. I listen to their show each day, cheering them on, hoping they win. Some nights, they do: they make the right split-second setlist decisions, they find a way to build out a song in a new, unexpected way, or they improvise into uncharted territory.
Some nights, they lose: the setlist is full of overplayed songs, there’s not much improvisation, “The Line” is played. My point is that Phish is all about each successive performance, what innovation or decision is going to happen next. As much as Phish fans like to look backward, we look backward for what was new and special on just one night.
Which makes talking about any Phish studio album, especially one that’s twenty-five years old, seem sort of antithetical to the band’s raison d’être. Phish is never about locking in a definitive version of anything, which is what a studio album purports to be.
But, alas, here I am writing about Billy Breathes (1996). In my time writing for Albumism, I’ve let a lot of Phish anniversaries pass me by, choosing to not write about the likes of Junta (1989), Lawn Boy (1990), and Farmhouse (2000) because, well, I never really listen to those albums. They’re fine. To me, there’s not much of a point listening to the studio version of “The Squirming Coil” from Lawn Boy when much more exciting versions exist elsewhere. For some reason, though, Billy Breathes feels different.
In Bittersweet Motel, the 2000 documentary about Phish’s life on tour, bassist Mike Gordon criticizes guitarist Trey Anastasio for playing a lot of notes. A Lot Of Notes is what characterized the early days of Phish; many complex parts would weave on top of one another, create a dense thicket of music for a listener to wade through. A lot of these songs are brilliant, but are not the most vulnerable pieces of music ever composed. What makes Billy Breathes so exciting is that we hear a lot of the distinctly Phishy compositional moves used in service of doing less, rather than doing more. The result is a much more emotive album, and a sound that Phish could not have achieved in an arena.
If we compare the opening of Lawn Boy’s “Split Open and Melt” to the beginning of Billy Breathes’ “Theme From The Bottom,” we can see how Phish used part layering to two dramatically different effects. In “Melt,” the different parts fight for attention. The piano shoves the guitar aside, which had already taken over the bass, creating a whirr of instruments that is intellectually fun, but doesn’t grab the heartstrings. (When the band introduces horns for the second verse, the “too many notes” problem isn’t exactly alleviated.) Compare this to “Theme,” in which the different parts make space for and respond to each other. The listener is invited to inhabit the song in a way that is not possible with “Melt,” rendering the changes in tone from verse to chorus more meaningful—something that we understand, and are part of, is changing.
The back half of the album is defined by a run of acoustic songs (unusual for Phish) that place the band’s tendency to defy songwriting convention in a new setting. The title track, for example, is an understated, fragile ballad that features one loud chord where the end would be, followed by about thirty seconds of nearly percussion-less interplay between Gordon, Anastasio, and pianist Page McConnell. There is no solo in this short stretch—instead, three equal performers in conversation with one another. Even though “Billy Breathes” is played from time to time in live performances, the pathos of this section (and the uplifting guitar solo that follows) does not deliver in quite the same way in an arena because it cannot not inhabit that fragile state that makes the back half of the album what it is.
Perhaps the best example of Billy Breathes’ separate identity as an album, and not merely a recreation of a Phish show, is the finale: “Prince Caspian.” In the live setting, “Caspian” is a song defined by a midtempo, two-chord vamp, usually sequestered in the middle of the set as a cooldown song so that band and audience can catch its collective breath. Only when the song goes on extended, thrilling improvisational journeys (for example) does it feel fitting to end a set with “Caspian.”
There is no extended journey with “Caspian” on Billy Breathes. In fact, the song is its usual, slow, celebratory self, winding down to almost nothing. But Billy Breathes could never have closed with something frantic like Phish’s usual live set-closers like “Golgi Apparatus” or “Tweezer Reprise.” It would have made no sense; we’re not closing out a live show here, and the band knows it. We’re closing out something entirely different. This restraint that defines Billy Breathes leads to the most fitting close possible.
So, Billy Breathes is where Phish figured out how to do the things that make them special—abstract songwriting, part layering, form experimentation—in a way that enables them to back away from the fatal flaw of Too Many Notes. When Phish fans look backward, we look backward for what was new and special on just one night. Billy Breathes is the album that does that. Phish wins.
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