[WhiteNoise]

I think past a certain point, when you've performed these songs for 15-25 years, there's only so many ways you can arrange a song, only so much enjoyment and surprise you can get out of improvising. Once you've found a fantastic arrangement for a live song, there's not as much satisfaction in performing an "inferior" take for the hell of it, when you can execute a great version that gives you a rush to pull off exactly right and makes audiences go nuts.



I definitely still love the sense of surprise and interaction, over hearing a take executed exactly like the album or Everything, Everything. But even the most die hard fans have maybe heard only 30-40% of all the shows they've ever done and that's exhausting. Imagine hearing all of them, playing all of them, and the one thing you haven't done is put together the "perfect performance" and tour it consistently.



Besides, the entire ethos of spontaneity and improvisation found a new home in Drift and I'm pretty happy to hear it. And live, it makes sense that Rick gets back into being improv heavy when it comes to new material like this and the Carnival sets from 2017 - the element of surprise is back, he hasn't performed those songs a hundred times yet.



I get how the lightshow could have led to more controlled setlists - the lightshows from 2010-2014 were a lot more elaborate. Following that was Dubno's tour which introduced performing studio-exact renditions of songs paired with minimal visuals which made sense, and likely felt comfortable and new for them, so it was an easy decision to carry that on to Barbara Barbara's tours. Then the band has some fun again in 2017-2018 - Amsterdam, Rick's opener sets, surprise additions like And I Will Kiss - while also getting to continue presenting studio-exact performances. Immediately after that? Summer 2018 is the start of Drift recording, and no spare time to re-imagine things.


It's definitely weird to have a giant high res screen just to show off some typography, but IDK, it's not my money. If we keep getting great studio tunes I'm pretty happy, and it's not worth seeing a band live if they're not enjoying what they're doing, and you're only going to get good improv if they're into it.