Phish Swims Through Styles in Eclectic Three-Hour Concert

Phish has certainly learned its lessons well from the Grateful Dead and other bands that refracted strains of vernacular music through a psychedelic rock prism. But the Vermont band is a child of the ‘70s, not the ‘60s, so in addition to weaving elements of folk, blues and country through its set on Sunday at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, the band also charged through some songs with heavy metal thunder, and pulled off tricky, odd-metered passages that sounded like contemporary progressive rock.

Phish used the first half of its nearly three-hour show to home in on groove-driven material. And why not? Improvisation is Phish’s raison d’e^tre, and it didn’t take long for the band’s whimsical narratives to dissolve into exploratory instrumentals. With drummer Jon Fishman and bassist Mike Gordon laying down four-square vamps and guitarist Trey Anastasio churning up prickly, percussive riffs, the band at times sounded like a laid-back version of the JB’s, James Brown’s legendary band.

Phish’s second set was devoted to material that allowed the band to flex its chops. Songs such as “Guyute” and “Character Zero” have a prog-rock pedigree, and were constructed as multi-part epics that sounded like some gene-splicing experiment between Yes and Frank Zappa. This was the peak of the crescendo the band had been carefully working toward all evening, and as its playing became brawnier and more dynamic, the crowd responded in kind, cheering on every knotty filigree with the fervor that only the true supplicant can summon.