Possibly the best Slave played, extremely well crafted throughout.

Slave to the Traffic Light. Ah I can feel the nostalgia just saying the name. After being introduced to Phish, and after attending my first show (6/4/11) I declared "Slave" to be my favorite Phish song. It's everything that describes Phish (to me, anyway) in one song-short, almost haiku-like lyrics ("See the city, see the zoo...traffic light won't let me through) with some simple, yet catchy guitar hooks (sometimes it takes a virtuoso to do more with less).

Of course it still requires a team of masterful Class A type virtuoso musicians to do what Phish does with this song. Fortunately, Phish are masterful Class A type virtuoso musicians, so naturally this song fares well live. But this version is something else. I've listened to a lot and I mean A LOT of Slave's in my few years of loving this band (with 12/30/93, 11/21/97, and 7/4/00 being some of my favorites) but this Slave is hands-down my all time favorite.

In the first place, the composed section is nailed with lots of energy (which shouldn't be too difficult of a feat considering the relative simplicity of this song compared to others in the Phish canon). But even beyond that, the jam itself starts out flawless (you know, where Trey is shredding on a distorted guitar with Fish pounding the tom-toms and bass drum almost as if they were ceremonial drums). Alright well, that section also shouldn't be too terrible because that's kind-of a "composed pre-jam" section.

Now what comes after this section? Well now we've reached the jam. Starting out on an almost muted guitar, Trey is arpeggiating a real cool major chord with Page accenting this arpeggio on the keyboard. Soon, a melody line is added, and the guitar gradually turns up and Page follows, gradually getting his keys to do the light hearted bell sound effects. Now, the band is in full locomotion on a train that is floating on air. Trey is doing mostly leads, but the jam still retains the light and airy-ness of before, until it builds and builds to the peak of the jam. Now the band is turned all the way up and they are in perfect synchronization with each other. Page plays those divine chords while Trey plays a very melodic line accenting those chords. It almost sounds like a chorus.

This is as much as I'll do with a description of the jam because truth-be-told, I can't word this review exactly how I want to, and even if I could, I still would not be doing this jam justice. It really reaches a height I very rarely hear Phish go to, and Phish goes really high a lot of the times. This Slave is one for the ages, and is a must-hear. Great cool-down jamming with high energy climax and ending. The jam is really a yin-yang of itself. Listen now if you haven't heard this one yet!