Holy shit!!!! What a great show!!

Okay, yeah, I know all of you who know me are thinking that I would say that no matter what. No. Their last show at the Black Cat was kind of crappy. This one was fantastic.

Wait a minute -- first things first. Let's get the crap out of the way. The opening band, Phoebus, quite frankly, SUCKED ASS. In my time, I've seen lots and lots of bands, many of which were bad. This was one of the worst, if not the worst, in a couple years. They played their instruments okay, but only okay. All of the songs sounded exactly alike and that one song was your very run-of-the-mill simple Pop Rock average song with very weak lyrics. The singer ought to be put out of his (or our) misery.

Now, on to the good stuff. With the exception of one song, all of Phaser's songs were new. A couple were debuted at the Black Cat when they opened for British Sea Power last November. During the previous show, they were out of tune, voices strained, timing was off, they seemed tired or road-weary and they had started to break in a new drummer. This show was the exact opposite. Except for a few moments, everything was in tune, voices smooth and full of feeling. Everyone was in synch with each other, the drummer has found his place and is working out great, and all of the songs came off well. The best was the third song, ?Caught In A Landslide,? according to the set list, which got kind of spacey.

They ended their set with ?Sway,? the only older song of theirs. Even then, this was not ?Sway? as we know it. They saved it for the last song of the set and totally tore it up! This ?Sway? ended on a wild ride through a rocked out Phaser climax as we know these boys are known to do with ?Last Letter Home.?

After the set, Boris Skalsky came back to perform a very touching solo rendition of ?Baby Blue.? Just Boris singing while playing his electric piano. This was a gentler and more delicate version. Simple, yet beautiful.

It was obvious by watching the show that the boys were in fine form -- really into it and having a great time onstage, while we in the audience were digging the show. All in all, this was one of the best performances of theirs I've seen to date. If you missed the show, you really missed a real treat.

The new songs are quite varied from more rock n' roll to alt-country to space rock or shoegaze, yet all have that distinct Phaser sound. I can't wait until their next release, hopefully, to happen sometime this fall. As of now, they are back in the studio, hard at work, creating their next full-length album.