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I would like to put forth the just-for-fun theory that Kasvot Vaxt is actually the Phishification of Ghosts of the Forest. It’s Ghosts of the Forest cloaked in costume for the Halloween party. Lyrically, the two albums are companion pieces, two sides of the same coin. “Everything is overlapping.”
As already stated, Ghosts of the Forest was mostly direct. Often literal. Plain. Naked. Raw. Which is why it had such an immediate impact. “Why do we have to wait until it’s gone to know what love is?” “What was I so worried about? What a waste of time!”
These lyrics are a beautiful parallel to Parsifal asking the Fisher King, “Dearest Uncle, what ails you?” in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s timeless medieval tale “Parsifal.” (Note that “Parsifal” was interpreted by Joseph Campbell to mean, “Pierce down the middle” — as in, asking the most direct question, in the simplest most direct way, is how we can be healed by language. It connects.)
Dearest Uncle, what ails you? That was Ghosts of the Forest. “If you want to fly, let go.” “So this it, it’s over.”
Kasvot Vaxt, meanwhile, was meta Phish — it was all in costume, incognito, a deliberate farce. In true Phish fashion, there might more to unpack than just the surface prank. After the show and upon hearing these songs for the first time with the rest of us, Anastasio’s frequent songwriting partner, Tom Marshall, remarked that he was impressed with how the lyrics sounded almost exactly like what he would imagine Anastasio’s own original lyrics would sound like if they were written in a foreign tongue and then coarsely translated. Hold onto that thought, too.
There was a general consensus among fans that Kasvot Vaxt was a return to form for Phish lyrics. Phrases like “This is what space smells like” and “I’m the glue in your magnet” didn’t appear to have much of a deeper meaning. If anything, they sounded like awkward translations, as Marshall observed. But above all, they were catchy and playful and just plain fun. They were fun to hear and fun to sing along with. Not unlike “We’re all in this together, and we love to take a bath” or “Your hands and feet are mangos but you’re gonna be a genius anyway.”
Fans instantly adapted Kasvot Vaxt lyrics into vernacular memes, fan art, and all the other things that we, as Phish fans, tend to do. They felt like the Phishiest songs Phish rolled out in a hot minute.
Much, if not all, of the Kasvot catalog might belong in the “Fluffhead” box in that – maybe – the song meanings are in near opposition to the emotion of the music; a playful way of cloaking something a bit more serious, a way of expressing common sentiments in uncommon ways. Of taking the ordinary and making it extraordinary.
In this light, the album title, Faceplant into Rock (or í Rökk in the native tongue) becomes a humorous metaphor, a way of saying someone bit the dust, went belly up, kicked the can, bent over and buffalo billed. Potentially. (There are other interpretations that are also viable and the very fact that it’s so easily adaptable to multiple appropriations indicates that it hits the high mark on the Phishiness Meter).
“Everything is overlapping.”
Now consider this: we often respond to a period of profound sadness with a period of pronounced joy, release, a renewed thirst for life. That welcome return gives our souls a certain amount of comic relief. Perhaps Kasvot Vaxt served as Anastasio’s comic relief after Ghosts of the Forest.
If you wanted to make jokes at a funeral and English wasn’t your first language, you might end up saying something like, “Frozen in place, cast into space, transported too fast, you know it don’t last — death don’t hurt very long.”
They told us in the Phishbill that all the Kasvot songs were originally written in a foreign tongue. That’s fake news. But it was a key part of the narrative for the Halloween prank. Translations can have bumpy transitions across languages. As an experiment, I took a line from a Ghost of the Forest song and had Google Translate change it to several languages before converting it back into English. If nothing else, what I got was interesting to entertain:
“If you want to fly, go vacation” came from “If you want to fly, let go.”
“I am clear, the ghost came to visit” came from “I’m wide awake and the ghosts are out to greet me.”
And to double back on Kasvot’s own counterfeit translation, “This is what space smells like,” I had Google Translate change it into Finnish and then back. This resulted in “This is a state of smell.” Sounds like it could easily come from a Phish song, right?
Now, this was just an exercise and doesn’t mean anything — but it is interesting, especially in relation to this exploration.
The Phishbill that I mentioned earlier, distributed to fans entering the arena on Halloween, contained a background essay that was in on the joke. It opened with, “It’s as if Kasvot Vaxt never existed. But Halloween is about ghosts…”
Now let’s compare specific lyrics from Ghosts of the Forest with specific lyrics from Kasvot Vaxt, tit for tat, without listing which line is from which. Look closely and think about them for a moment:
“Bright white light shining right between my eyes” vs.
“There’s a light that’s guiding me”
“Look around at the light, the shapes, the colors all around you” vs.
“Take a look around, the shapes are hanging over you”
“…the lost and the loved ones, they’re moving all around us” vs.
“Take a look around, the shapes are hanging over me”
“Regrets, maybe it’s not too late, I’m about to run” vs.
“Down below my feet, last forever, dark and scary, I ran away”
“Stumble into flight, you can taste the water” vs.
“This is what space smells like”
“When I die, I’ll turn into a giant ball of energy” vs.
“We are come to outlive our brains”
“Descended from apes, you’re just changing shapes, death don’t hurt very long” vs.
“Forms change so fast, time is moving past…. gonna get wider when I die.”
“Sonic sea vibrations passing over you, let go forever” vs.
“If you want to fly, let go”
“We are only passing through, we’re vapor…” vs.
“We’re moving at vapor speed”
“Crystal memories shimmer in my mind, of laughing all together, I will always cherish till the end of my time” vs.
“You will always remember where you were”
“It’s such a beautiful world, and such a brief time” vs.
“Take a look around, stop trying to rush nature”
“We’re vapor, light, and liquid blue” vs.
“Vapor splits into yellow light…and it’s blue all around”
“Sweet longing freezes time” vs.
“Time slows down, waves roll…”
“We are momentarily frozen” vs.
“My thoughts are frozen”
“The rules of gravity no longer apply as I drift off into a mint siren dream night sky” vs.
“This is what space smells like”
“We are only passing through, we’re vapor, light and liquid blue” vs.
“Going home, the swells of blue connect you to the ocean and the sky”
“We are breaking waves, crashing, high above gravity…we are letting go” vs.
“Sonic sea vibrations passing over you, let go forever”
It certainly looks like a match. There’s a thematic thread that weaves the two sets of lyrics together and a surprising number of instances in which even the key words are the same or expressed via synonyms and corresponding concepts. It’s as if you can recycle the final hurrah… with an inventive and creative result.
The band reportedly worked on the Kasvot Vaxt songs shortly after Curveball, their 2018 summer festival, was unexpectedly cancelled, which likely comes into play in verses like: “Friends are dancing on the hill side / for the first time in a long time / I want to live another day.” So the two albums overlap but aren’t always mirror images. Companions, not twins.
And it’s important to keep in mind that Kasvot was a collaborative effort (whereas Ghosts of the Forest was not), just as it’s equally important to remember that, in the past, the band has shown a willingness to traverse subject matter (and styles, time signatures, even tempos) within a single song.
In the end, regardless of whether or not the two projects were intended to interlock, there’s a thematic continuity or overlap that is certain. One was expressed in a way that we all knew the intent was a eulogy and celebration of life (Ghosts of the Forest) while the other was expressed as a costume within a costume since the intent was a dance party for Halloween. Both worked.
And regardless of whether or not Kasvot Vaxt was actually the Phishification of Ghosts of the Forest, or if it was merely the Phishification of an imaginary underground Scandinavian rock act, it remains the latest proof positive that Phish is still at their Phishiest — lyrically — when they take common sentiments and express them in uncommon ways; when they take ordinary concepts and make them extraordinary.
Everything is overlapping.
11 Comments comments associated with this post
Bella Anastasio
June 17, 2019 at 1:04 pmI stopped reading when I noticed that Goddard was spelled incorrectly. “Going back to his Godard College thesis”
Scotty G
August 7, 2019 at 7:43 pmHaha. That’s awesome. Is it really you? Haha. Pretty observant I thought.
rgfd
June 17, 2019 at 10:19 amand this is why i’m not a Phish fan. hard for me to find a soul-stirring connection to “fantasy land” music. I don’t like video games either. I really wanted to get it, but…. c’e la vie
Eric W.
June 16, 2019 at 10:59 amGreat read. What you have elaborated on here–the overlap–I had picked up intuitively without ever considering so semantically. This is not to say it was easy to understand, but rather that, while failing to see the more direct connections, I could sense a common emotion, a common theme. Fascinating how it spins back (overlaps!) all the way back for Trey. I cant help but shake my head when folks reduce artistic analysis and evaluation to “having too much time on your hands.” These folks fail to give Trey and Tom (et.al) the merit they deserve. But, again, as you comment, this misunderstanding has always been and will always be. Phish speaks in two languages and, thus, speaks to so many. I can’t wait to see Between Me and My Mind (or whatever the title…); I bet we will only wonder more about the many ways the Phish-y world runs circles around us as we dance and groove.
roger moore
June 15, 2019 at 2:26 pmthe lyrics comparison is pretty interesting. I’ll still go with my theory that Kasvot Vaxt is based on a Ketamine trip.
[email protected]
June 14, 2019 at 12:40 pmAppreciate the essay, dedicated to your craft and please keep them coming.
PS: Love jambands, don’t always love the fans..
Ellie
June 14, 2019 at 9:24 amAgree with James. WAY too much time on your hands. Trey is an artist using music and lyrics as an outlet medium. He is certainly not this contrived. Get a hobby.
Jeremiah Evans
June 14, 2019 at 3:23 amGreat read, thank you. I’ve had a similar rap with my posse about the two batches of songs and how they are working on the same themes.
I’ve thought about the Leonard Cohen cover, from The Chilling Thrilling Halloween installment in 2014 (from Cohen’s New Skin for the Old Ceremony) might have been a signal from the band recognizing that Halloween is Phish’s high holy holiday, and one who’s conjurings are in constant need of new skin.
I did a similar comparison to your line by line in these two batches of songs, where I searched the Halloween Covers for similarities to songs in the Kasvot Vox set. It seemed to me during the 2018 Halloween show, the new skin was a re-arrangement of some of the classic rock songs from past Cover sets into newly forged prank Norwegian new Phish songs.
For instance Cool Amber, and Mercury borrows from the musical and lyrical domain of the Velvet Underground’s, Cool it Down, and Train Coming Round the Bend.
I won’t go on here in the comments, but
“you can recycle the final hurrah”
If you want to exchange ideas, I’d nerd out on and attempt some eloquence.
James
June 13, 2019 at 3:45 pmWay too much time on your hands buddy
Kevin
June 14, 2019 at 2:58 amFascinating take on these two approaches to fresh Phish. Maybe James (poster above) will not actually outlive his brain. Poor fella.
Julie
July 22, 2021 at 7:38 amDude. He’s a fan and an accomplished writer. WTF