Released: 1993
Tracks: Rift; Fast Enough For You; Lengthwise; Maze; Sparkle; Horn; The Wedge; My Friend, My Friend; Weigh; All Things Reconsidered; Mound; It’s Ice; Lengthwise; The Horse; Silent in the Morning
Best tracks: Rift, It’s Ice, Fast Enough, Maze
Track to skip: duh, none!
There are lots of reasons why I love this album and one of the main ones is keyboardist Page McConnell’s HUGE presence on this. Vocally his main contribution thus far has been the silly (and good) Lawn Boy. Other than that, he’s just been relegated to background vocals and of course his excellence at the keys. Here on Rift we get a huge dose of Page on the title track (duet with guitarist Anastasio), also full blown leads on It’s Ice and Silent in the Morning. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Page gets the featured spot on probably the best tracks on here. And even more than all that, his keyboard contributions are stellar all the way through. Oh yeah, his background vocals rock too. I really see this as his ‘breakout’ album.
I still think the song Rift is one of the most perfect things Phish (Anastasio & Marshall) have come up with so far. It was absolutely another one of those “Wow!” songs the first time I heard it. Another obvious one of those is Fast Enough For You, a very beautiful song. Maze is a live favorite and another excellent composition (more excellence from Page too!) with very original and creative subject matter. I think a lot of people are probably turned off by Tom Marshall’s lyrics, but I really don’t understand why. His ideas are mostly pretty original (a rarity among lyricists) and even when he does do ‘traditional’ subject matter he always presents the lyrics in a different way than most do. Honestly, all 5 of them (McConnell, Anastasio, Marshall, bassist Mike Gordon and drummer Jon Fishman) really stepped it up on this album.
Before the usual ‘last paragraph wrap-up’, here are some more things I love about Rift: the guitar solo in Horn (melt), lyrics and everything else on It’s Ice, the Crimson-esque Silent in the Morning, the artwork, the acoustic guitar on The Horse, Mike’s using of Benny Hill’s theme on the first riff of It’s Ice…yeah, nearly all the dern thing. Is Rift better than Picture of Nectar? Hmm, no, it isn’t. But, like you can probably guess, it’s damn close. The great thing is that they can actually get better than Nectar and Rift. Both are great introductions to Phish as a studio band and either one should do the job. I think the best songs on here are better than the best ones on Nectar, but Rift does a minor ‘sag’ in the middle songs of the album. Maybe it’s just that the outsides are so damn excellent. Who cares, this is essential.
Rating: 96
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