20 years ago today, Phish kicked off a four-night Northeast run that included two nights each at Nassaue Coliseum in Uniondale, NY, and Providence Civic Center in Providence, RI. Looking back to the celebrated run, which came to be known as the band’s Island Tour, we present our review of the LivePhish release that chronicled the shows. This article originally appeared in the September/October 2005 issue of Relix.

So, the short version is that if 12 discs worth of Phish music even remotely seems like a good idea to you, then you should probably acquire the eight sets, four encores, and two soundcheck of Phish’s so-called Island Tour with quickness. And, if it doesn’t, well, if there was ever any kernel of Phish music that might convince you, odds are high that it’s somewhere here, too.

If Phish’s most unique voice emerged during its jams, then the April 1998 Island Tour—the islands being Long and Rhode—is noteworthy simple because it contains, disc or disc, a remarkable amount of marvelous jamming from the band’s most mature period. Each performance brims with the lyrical Zen psychedelia the group was trying to bottle that spring at Bearsville Studios, and there are surprises everywhere.

“For those of you who just wanna dance to the funk, we’re just gonna stay around and keep groovin’,” guitarist Trey Anastasio promises near the end of the run’s final disc. Though the quartet only bops for another ten minutes (and then encores with a decidedly non-groovin’ Hendrix cover, “Bold As Love”), Anastasio’s babble might be take as a sort of inverted prologue—especially on a tour where the band had already reprised “Tweezer” (on April 3rd at Nassau Coliseum) before actually playing it (on April 4th at the Providence Civic Center).

The gold begins on opening night, April 2nd, with an elegant “Stash,” which twists almost violently from vine-like atonal dementia into floral major key blossoms. The second set is highlighted by a humming, fluid “Twist,” and dotted with two debuts, the hyperactive “Birds of a Feather,” filled with precise Talking Heads funk burbles, and the ethereal “Frankie Says,” all sinuous cross-melodies and intricate Jon Fishman cymbal patterns.

Nearly each set is undergridded-by an architecture that propels it forward in fun, dramatic increments. On April 3rd, a brilliantly abstract take of Ween’s “Roses Are Free” rambles into a spiraling “Piper,” through The Rolling Stones’ gospel-fused “Loving Cup,” and lands in a playfully squalling “Run Like an Antelope.” Each of the encore’s three songs (“Carini Had a Lumpy Head,” “Halley’s Comet” and “Tweezer Reprise”)—split with dynamic stop-time segues—raise the stakes, too, through spontaneously progoriffic tempo shifts and key modulations.

The second half of April 4th—opening night in Providence—is every bit as considered. The first “Brother” since 1996 has the band uniquely navigating the song’s bizarre time signatures with a rare comfort, especially bassist Mike Gordon. A blissfully uptempo “Ghost”—the last with its original stop-time introduction—crests into Otis Redding’s “I Can’t Turn You Loose” (the Blues Brothers theme) and reforms into a delicate, assured “Lizards.”

The last night of the tour is also its loosest. In the wake of the previous three evenings, Anastasio’s sloppily orchestrated segue from a languid “Bathtub Gin” jam into Talking Heads’ “Cities,” the premiere of the lazily slithering “Shafty,” and the solo breakdowns during The Mustangs’ “Ya Mar” all seem pretty run of the mill. Even so, the band is bursting with fertile creativity on all fronts (as evidenced by still the third arrangement of “Shafty”/”Oblivious Fool” on the filler of their Providence soundcheck).

That spring, the apparently endless wellspring seemed like a blessing. But, in the midst of shaping Story of the Ghost, the band found itself with too much: too many of Anastasio’s songs to record, or even learn, and too many jams to jam. Within weeks of the Island Tour, Anastasio would take the stage with what would become the solo band that, by his own accounting, he convened to deal with the overflow that eventually led him from Phish altogether.

It is a moment one can hear approaching on April 3’s “Weekapaug Groove” as Anastasio improvises on the changes that would soon become “First Tube,” his not-yet-new band’s signature song. It doesn’t work rhythmically and Anastasio tucks the idea into his pocket for another day. He slips back into the jam with ease, and—for its remainder—it’s just Phish again, a delicious moment of utopian single-mindedness as the wave builds.