Review- Zwan's Mary, Star of the Sea and Phish's Round Room

-by Tyler M. Carey

For all intents and purposes Mary Star of the Sea isn't the first album of a new band called Zwan - it's the latest Smashing Pumpkins album. There have been plenty of artists who started successful bands after the break-up of an iconic rock band (The Foo Fighters and Wings are two such projects that come to mind), but Billy Corgan's Zwan really is the next step in the metamorphosis of the Smashing Pumpkins. Yes, James Iha is off in NY, being pensive, like he does best, but Corgan, Jimmy Chamberlin and colleagues Dave Pajo (Tortoise - guitar), Matt Sweeney (Skunk - guitar), and Paz Lenchantin (A Perfect Circle - bassist) are carrying on the Pumpkins torch. The question now becomes, is it better than what they've done before?

Yes. If you liked their hummable singles and the ballads and pop songs off of Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, but could do with a little less of the industrial effects, then this album is for you. Myself, I see this as an evolution in Corgan's songwriting ability. None of the tracks drone on with feedback (which is good, if you're Sonic Youth, but I never saw it as SP's strong point), and most are very radio friendly. Corgan's lyrics still need some tweaking in places ("Whatever you want//I'll get//'Cuz I'm good like that..."), but overall they do not detract from the songs as a whole. Indeed, taking some time to reform his band and work on his songwriting has made for a fine end product.

Phish on the other hand? Man, I was wishing I could say something nice about Round Room. Indeed, there are nice things I can say about it, but overall, I really can't call it a good album. When I heard that Phish was returning from hiatus, and planning on releasing an album, I got excited. Phish was one of the best live acts of the 90s, but by their '00 tour, they were starting to seem sardonic. Every show on felt like it was phoned in, and they knew it, and could care less. Heck, the Grateful Dead took a nice hiatus in '74-'75, and they came back as the rejuvenated king of jam bands; maybe Phish would do the same, I thought. Sadly, what I heard of Round Room, and their performance on SNL around Christmas made me feel lucky that I had been unable to get tickets for their New Years appearances at the Garden. Phish's return from hiatus will no doubt be just as successful as the Dead's was (indeed, all of their posted concert dates for the coming year are sold out, already), but I'm not so sure it should be.

Where Billy Corgan seemed to have grown during his hiatus, Phish seems to have atrophied. Granted, it's tough to judge Phish on Round Room - the album was recorded in a matter of days and some tracks reportedly are first takes. Most of the songs show promise of sorts. The opening track, "Pebbles and Sand" is one of those post-funk jam songs that suggests hints of Buddy Guy, Booker T and of course Medeski, Martin and Wood. Its lyrics are the usual faux-existential Phish crap (don't blame me - I'm a fan, but their lyrics have always sucked), but those are made up for by the nifty blues hook and keyboard work. Sadly, the blues hook and keyboard work are repeated ad nauseum for over ten minutes. The jam doesn't "go" anywhere, as all my hippie friends would insist, but just serves to be the most protracted rock album opening since the overture to Tommy. Another song that I wish I could say was great as "Forty-six Days" - this was one of the new tracks Phish debuted on SNL around the holidays. If hadn't watch Trey stand at the mike re-reciting "Forty-six days! Forty-six days and the coal ran out! Forty-six days!" I would have thought that my LP was stuck in a groove. The song again has a great hook, and if I could really understand the words, what sounds like a neat story, but it just doesn't go anywhere. Round Room is a great album to have in your car's CD changer, because you can listen to the songs until they become tiresome and then jump to another.

Lastly, I'd like to close on a Phish rant. What the fuck is with the song "Mock Song" on Round Room? This is one of those lyrical jokes of theirs like "Contact" ("The wheels are the things on your car that make contact with the road, the wheels are the things...") or "Mike's Song". Somewhere along the way, and I believe it was fairly early in their career, Phish decided that half the fun of being a rock star was manipulating the audience. This was fun with some of their bits like the Big Ball Jam (wherein the audience "played" the band, by the band reacting to the audience's movement of several gigantic inflatable balls) or Secret Language (an elaborate version of Pee Wee Herman's Secret Word game, where the audience had to do little dances and things in reaction to secret phrases the band played). Unfortunately, the only early bit of this that hung on was the band's freezing in the middle of "Divided Sky" - this was cute when Trey used to freeze like a statue for a moment or three, but during one gig in '99, he froze for several minutes. This of course led me to scream, "We're sheep, Trey! Define us, you asshole!" Mock song seems to be another one of these bits - a nonsensical useless track that just seems like an in-joke amongst band-members. Guys, it is a waste of our time and money to suffer through this crap. There are moments when I think that about the whole damn album, too.