Image via YouTube.

Last week, in one last eruption of anticipation for Phish’s 16th studio album Evolve, fans caught a sneak peek of the band’s setup from behind Bob Boilen’s iconic desk at NPR Music HQ in Washington, D.C. Today, five days in the wake of its widely acclaimed release, the Vermont quartet officially makes its Tiny Desk debut, bringing five tracks and a bag of tricks for an intimate, stripped back set.

Phish opened its Tiny Desk performance with a breezy treatment of “Sigma Oasis,” gently gliding through a tease of the All Things Considered themes–which the band famously reworked as “All Things Reconsidered” for 1993’s Rift–along the way. The band tossed in another taste at the song’s close to highlight the history for anyone who missed it, before Trey thanked the audience for the opportunity and introduced the outfit as “the Phish from Vermont.” Next came “Evolve,” the title track from the band’s new album and the only entry from that project in a setlist that spanned several of the band’s eras.

After the second track, Anastasio mused, “I was just thinking that when we started the band, we used to practice in a room exactly this size.” On this retrospective note, Trey and Mike Gordon fished out and showed off a pair of particularly tiny trampolines from the ‘80s, prompting the guitarist to gleefully “warm up” with tiny leg-warmers and teasing a follow-up of “You Enjoy Myself.” An abbreviated run through the 1989 Junta classic brought Anastasio and Gordon’s synchronized trampoline routine to the close quarters and spilled out beyond the desk for the vocal jam, when all four members marched through the crowd with handheld percussion instruments. But that’s not all: Once the credits rolled out, the band returned to the desk for a tiny encore, comprised of a ripping pairing of the classics “Sample In a Jar” and “Chalk Dust Torture.”

While this marked Phish’s first formal appearance on Tiny Desk, the members of the endlessly influential jam band are no strangers to the series. Back in 2015, Trey Anastasio appeared on the program for a solo set including “All Things Reconsidered.” Then, when NPR introduced the Tiny Desk (Home) series to sate fans through the height of the pandemic, among those artists tapped were a duo of Mike Gordon and collaborator Leo Kottke, who roped Jon Fishman in on the fun. From offstage, Anastasio participated again as a judge in the 2017 Tiny Desk Contest, throwing his vote behind the winners Tank and the Bangas.

Watch Phish’s Tiny Desk performance below. For more information on the band’s 2024 touring schedule and Evolve, visit phish.com.