Phish swam over to The Tonight Show Thursday to perform the title track from their new album Evolve, and even cover a bit of Aerosmith.
The band helped craft the show’s cold open with Jimmy Fallon and the Roots’ Questlove and Black Thought. The bit saw Phish getting into an elevator with the host and musicians and, immediately after the door closed, break into a fully a cappella, perfectly harmonized, parody cover of Aerosmith’s “Love in an Elevator” with lyrics tweaked to, “Phish in an Elevator.”
The singing was briefly suspended when some suit got on, but after he departed on another floor, Phish, Fallon, and the Roots let out one big, goofy, final hook before casually disembarking.
Phish returned later to perform “Evolve,” slipping in a few jammy solos where the time constraints of late-night TV allowed, but otherwise once again showing off their sublime harmonies: “First came the light, then came the sound,” Trey Anastasio and co. sang, “Then came the worlds that can never slow down/Then came the people with problems and hope/That don’t mean a thing, if they just knew the scope.”
Evolve arrives today, July 12, and marks Phish’s first studio album since 2020’s Sigma Oasis. The record features three songs that Anastasio originally wrote and recorded for his 2020 solo album Lonely Trip, including “Evolve,” “Lonely Trip,” and “A Wave of Hope.”
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Anastasio spoke about writing the songs and testing them out live during Phish shows, Trey Anastasio Band shows, and even some of his own solo acoustic performances. It was those last gigs, Anastasio said, that were most helpful in figuring out if a song was good or not.
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“I learned that if a song is a good song, it always works solo acoustic,” he said, adding: “So, before we went in for this album, I made myself a secret, private solo-acoustic version of the album, after having played the songs live. I did that just to look at each song one more time, and make sure that it was in the right key, all the lyrics were great, all the lyrical phrasing was great. And that all the B sections and everything were completed. And then, we went back out, played everything one more time, live. Literally, I think we did them all once, and then we went straight into the studio and recorded the whole thing in two days.”
Phish will kick off their summer tour July 19 at the Xfinity Center in Mansfield, Massachusetts. The run will wrap with four nights at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park in Commerce City, Colorado, Aug. 29 through Sept. 1.
