Elektra / Wea
2003
Plasma (Live)
About This Album
Trey Anastasio officially launched his solo career in the spring of 2002 with a self-titled solo album, supporting it with a tour in the summer that reunited him with Phish, who released an album toward the end of the year, just when Anastasio played another round of solo shows. It was a busy year for the de facto Phish leader, and its aftershocks are captured on Plasma, a double-disc live album that samples from concerts and soundchecks he played with his solo band throughout 2002. Songwise, it's a hodgepodge of new songs, cuts from the solo albums, Phish tunes, and a cover of Bob Marley's "Small Axe," so it's less a faithful reproduction of a concert than it is an aural diary of a year, which is probably a better way to represent his music in 2002, since it was a bit of a crazy quilt patchwork. Better that, though, than the lazy, ramshackle nature of Phish's reunion Round Room, which sounded far more tossed-off than this. The scattershot nature of this reflects the restless nature of Anastasio's muse during this time, how he feels alive and engaged when he's working on a sprawling, all-encompassing platform. Trey Anastasio focused that desire into perfectly realized, crystallized pop songs as sophisticated as Steely Dan.
Track List

Disc 1 (try tracks 2,6 and 7)

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Disc 2

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