It’s a little after midnight on the opening night of Phish’s sold-out run at the Sphere, and the northern lights are shining bright over Sin City.
“Never ever saw the northern lights,” Trey Anastasio sang during the group’s encore of “Farmhouse.” “I never really heard of cluster flies/I never saw the stars so bright.”
They might not’ve been the real deal, but for a brief moment on Thursday night, that spectacle lit up the fabricated night sky for the group’s first night of shows at the hottest new venue in Las Vegas.
Phish heads had started the journey hours earlier, as joyful fans made their way to the venue from nearby hotels and restaurants before the show’s 8 p.m. start time.
“I’m going to put that on [their] crib for sure,” we overheard one Phan — perhaps a new parent — tell their friends as everyone inched closer to the Sphere, holding a sticker of a guitar-wielding Anastasio.
Filling the headlining spot previously held by U2, Anastasio and the band kicked off their first night at the $2 billion Sphere with a rollicking “Everything’s Right.” Changing-color pillars grew and grooved behind them on the screen, seemingly like the band was playing in front a moving pipe organ in an animated film or had taken a wild trip to the Giant’s Causeway. “Na na na na, na na na nah, it’s going to be all right,” Anastasio declared.
“Welcome, everybody, welcome,” Anastasio told the energetic crowd in between tracks, speaking from the minimal, oval-shaped stage setup below the big screen. “Thank you for being here.”
The crowd went wild. They were about to witness a completely unique, immersive, and, at times, overwhelming show on Phish’s first night at the Sphere — a mini-sized residency that’s one of the hottest tickets in town. The band had previously announced that each of its sold-out concerts at the Vegas venue would both look different and, not surprisingly, feature a different setlist.
“We’ve never repeated a set and we didn’t want to start now,” Anastasio previously told the Associated Press when asked about the four-date engagement. “So we created four unique Sphere shows, top to bottom. There was a moment where we were discussing adding shows, because the tickets blew out pretty hard. And we decided as a team that they would be good, but not necessarily astounding — which is the level that we wanted to operate at — unless we just repeated the exact same show over again.”
Continued Anastasio: “The other thing is that Phish is such a wacky community that it kind of set up this scenario where a lot of people would probably want to come back. It’s just the way our fans are. It’s kind of like a big, giant rolling family or community or something like that.”
Soon the band launched into “Back on the Train,” while a beach with sand, ocean, and open field appeared on the dome behind the group and over the audience. Nearly a half hour into the set, keyboardist Page McConnell played the opening chords of “Wolfman’s Brother,” while a colorful kaleidoscopic projection danced behind the band onscreen.
The evening saw no shortage of mind-blowing visuals. But tech aside, for the first night at the Sphere, Phish sounded tight and passionate as ever. They jammed with abandon, sounding fresh, focused, and clear as the sound from the 167,000-speaker system ricocheted across the room and each stunning new visual display appeared behind the stage and above the crowd.
Nearly an hour into the set, massive-sized lanterns appeared during one of the evening’s more intimate moments, as Anastasio sang the first few lines of “Leaves.” “Someone’s always telling me to breathe,” he sang, while the oversized props lifted into the sky on both sides of the stage. Soon smaller lamps filled the darkness behind the band on the screen — all underneath stars and a crescent-moon backdrop.
The band took a break around 9:30, when what’s likely the world’s largest animated screensaver kept fans entertained for nearly half an hour before Phish took the stage again. Once the band launched into “Sand,” the Sphere lit up and transformed into an exaggerated version of outer space, as star-like lights moved in waves across the venue while Anastasio and crew riffed.
The latter half of the show featured stellar jams and trippy treatments, with a collection of vibrantly colorful cars with Nevada plates that read “Phish 2024” zipping across the space and weaving in and out of the background during “Tweezer,” like we were all in some sort of psychedelic 3D movie. It didn’t stop there, either: “My Friend, My Friend” kept the crowd on their feet, while multiple Sphere-like globes panned across the venue with silhouettes of the group.
Shortly after 12:15 a.m., the first night of Phish’s Sphere run ended as the band blazed through a scorching rendition of “Run Like an Antelope” to a cheering crowd.
“Thank you so much everybody,” Anastasio told the audience. “We’ll see you tomorrow night.”
Phish Sphere Set List (Night 1)
Set One
“Everything’s Right”
“Back on the Train”
“Wolfman’s Brother”
“Maze”
“Leaves”
“Life Saving Gun”
“Dirt”
“Carini”
Set Two
“Sand”
“Tweezer”
“My Friend, My Friend”
“Mike’s Song”
“Lifeboy”
“Weekapaug Groove”
“Blaze On”
“Fluffhead”
Encore
“Farmhouse”
“Run Like an Antelope”
Steve Cohen*
