This came out in 2000 — or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
Supposedly, this album is called Farmhouse because of where it was made — eclectic jam-masters Phish recorded the album in a studio they built in a 150-year-old barn.
But the title also symbolizes the musical growth displayed on this eighth studio album. Toning down some of their kookier, kitschier (and sometimes more annoying) musical mannerisms and reining in their propensity for anything-goes arrangements and endless, free-form jams, the band — fronted as always by singer-guitarist Trey Anastasio — harvests a mature crop of down-to-earth roots-rockers grounded in songcraft instead of self-indulgent musicianship. Country and bluegrass-tinged tunes such as the title cut, Twist and Bug, with their winsome melodies and laid-back, unsophisticated essence, may be the band’s most appealing, least-forced works yet. Whether they’ll appeal to the Phish-heads who congregate to see them play the vacuum cleaner and cover Beastie Boys remains to be seen. But with Farmhouse, for the first time Phish suggest they actually might have the songwriting chops to live up to their billing as the next Grateful Dead.
