Photo credit: Dean Budnick

On Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Phish set off their eight-stop Spring Tour with a first-weekend sprint—and what a weekend it was. The first taste of the storied four-decade quartet’s outlook for 2025 was massively promising, showing a revitalized energy and focus that delivered new takes on old favorites. After running “Back on the Train” off the rails and dropping a glittering take on TV on the Radio’s “Golden Age” on their Friday, April 18 tour opener at Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena, the band returned ready for more on Saturday, and on Sunday carried the momentum through to their first performance in in Portland, Ore. since before the new millennium.

As countless fans in Seattle and around the world watched on in rapt anticipation, Phish tore into their Saturday show with a high-flying, arena-worthy “Free,” which settled the crowd with some focused and cathartic interplay. The band sailed back down to earth for a follow-up of the fun-forward, loping Lawn Boy centerpiece “Bathtub Gin,” which more than matched its expectations as a jam vehicle.

After patiently plotting through the track’s composed first section, frontman Trey Anastasio high-tailed it off into a series of guitar antics that slowly tweaked the theme into a more jangling, angular sound supported by a tightening backbeat from drummer Jon Fishman and a slushy funk from bassist Mike Gordon. Over this cocktail, keyboardist Page McConnell spun out woozy grand piano twists, and the band slipped into Type II territory by progressively pushing in as much tension as the track could take. When it finally crossed 20 minutes, “Gin” proved to be an early highlight of the evening.

“Evolve” came out true to its typical wide-eyed form as a palette cleanser before the quartet scaled their way back to another peak with “Stash.” Now clearly loosened up, they kept things light for “Pebbles and Marbles” and a radiant, nostalgic “Farmhouse,” then went big again for the eruptive “Suzy Greenberg,” which saw all four members building off each other’s energetic excursions to produce a treatment that was both tight to its classic sound and re-assembled from twisted, slightly shreddier voicings. This would’ve been, and nearly was, a fine place to wrap, the first frame, until Anastasio, still feeling it, called an audible and led the band into one last blast of energy with “Walls of the Cave.”

When they re-emerged for their fourth and final set at Climate Pledge, Phish bolted into “Chalk Dust Torture, a track Anastasio recently described to The New Yorker as “fast,” “ridiculous, and still, in some weird way, it’s my fucking all-time favorite Phish song.” More than 30 years since its debut, the fan-favorite has evolved considerably, and Saturday’s iteration was proof positive of the group’s shifting aims. Instead of emptying themselves into a neck-breaking full-throttle blowout, the artists added nuanced and eye-opening experimentation from the jump, then really took off as they moved from the composed section into a pace-shifting, pedal-heavy jam that was alternately stormy and brightly chromatic.

As the band skidded into a rocking peak, they suddenly cut out into a kaleidoscopic, electrifying “Light” that let them explore some of the farthest reaches of their sound in a proper cosmic breakdown. With an audible grin, they dropped back into “Chalk Dust Torture” and progressed to the 19-minute mark, then zagged again into a red-hot “Fuego” and seamlessly segued into the rarer Evolve entry “Monsters. From a set-closing merge of “Piper” and “Backwards Down the Number Line,” they finally closed out the show with a fun and fiery encore of “Sleeping Monkey” and “My Friend, My Friend.”

On Sunday, April 20, Phish’s stand at Portland, Ore.’s Moda Center was their first appearance in the city since September 1999. Much has changed since those hazy pre-Y2K days, and Phish is no exception; fans in Stumptown have somehow missed out on local presentations from versions 2.0, 3.0 and, arguably, 4.0. With their long-awaited return, the quartet made up for lost time with a powerful performance that picked up right where they left off.

Phish took the stage for the third show of their current run with a commanding, anthemic opener of “46 Days,” which was the first time that setlist staple had been performed in the city. This was a theme on Sunday night, as a whopping total of 12 songs in the 18-track setlist were live debuts for the city. Other First Time Portlands were the Anastasio solo original “Plasma,” 2020’s “Sigma Oasis,” “Everything’s Right” and “A Life Beyond the Dream,” Halloween 2018 alias Kasvot Växt’s “Say It to Me S.A.N.T.O.S.,” Trey’s Lonely Trip standout “A Wave of Hope,” Farmhouse’s “Twist,” Undermind’s “Scents and Subtle Sounds” and the enduring early days cut “Slave to the Traffic Light,” plus their now well-traveled covers of Talking Heads’ “Cities” and Stevie Wonder’s “Boogie on Reggae Woman.” The only track that was featured in both Sunday’s show and their last Portland play in ‘99 was “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Very cheeky.

Phish will return to the spotlight tomorrow, April 22, for the first of two shows at San Francisco’s Bill Graham Auditorium. For tickets and more information on the current run, visit phish.com.

Read on for the full setlists from Saturday and Sunday.

Phish
Climate Pledge Arena – Seattle
4/19/25
Set I: Free, Bathtub Gin, Evolve, Stash, Pebbles and Marbles, Farmhouse, Suzy Greenberg > Walls of the Cave
Set II: Chalk Dust Torture > Light > Chalk Dust Torture > Fuego -> Monsters, Piper > Backwards Down the Number Line
Encore: Sleeping Monkey, My Friend, My Friend

Phish
Moda Center – Portland, Ore.
4/20/25
Set I: 46 Days, The Moma Dance > Cities -> Plasma, Bouncing Around the Room, Sigma Oasis, Run Like an Antelope > Say It To Me S.A.N.T.O.S.
Set II: A Wave of Hope > Twist > Scents and Subtle Sounds > Everything’s Right -> Boogie On Reggae Woman > Also Sprach Zarathustra > A Life Beyond The Dream > Harry Hood
Encore: Wilson > Slave to the Traffic Light

Setlists via phish.net.