Billy Breathes
| Phish
Billy Breathes
Billy Breathes is the sixth studio album by American rock band Phish, released by Elektra Records on October 15, 1996. The album was credited with connecting the band, known for its jam band concerts and devoted cult following, with a more mainstream audience. The first single, "Free", was the band's most successful song on two Billboard rock charts, peaking at #11 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks Chart and at #24 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks Chart. -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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All Music
With the shorter songs, their musical depth and breadth is all the more apparent and impressive, making Billy Breathes the definitive Phish album the band has always strived to deliver.
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Classic Rock Review
the four-piece group combined folk, rock and psychedelic into standard-length, accessible numbers with a good sense of melody and song craft.
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Sputnik Music
Billy Breathes keeps void of tedium by making every song accessible and concise enough to appreciate.
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The Music Box
Despite all the borrowing, there is still an underlying feel that is unique to Phish's music. The group simply has synthesized all this together to create a loosely conceptual album about the birth of singer/guitarist Trey Anastasio's son as well as the band's life on the road. Billy Breathes is an excellent piece, and it rivals Rift as the group's most cohesive and best album to date.
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Jazz Music Archives
It is one of Phish's best works if not THE best. If Phish isn't your taste, I'd still suggest this any day for it's creative ability to draw you in with talent alone.
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Teen Ink
The band's new album, "Billy Breathes," shows the versatility of the band and gives new evidence of this difficulty of describing the group's style.
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Chicago Tribune
the buoyant, blissed-out mood is just right for an autumn afternoon in the park.
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The Night Owl
The tunes on Billy Breathes cover a lot of ground, yet the band manages to retain a new found sense of musical accessibility for the uninitiated. Forget all the comparisons, this is a band that has clearly come into its own.
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Rolling Stone
But like the band itself, Billy Breathes is a living thing, low in irony and high in deceptively laid-back ambition. Consider it a breath of fresh air from the country’s biggest cult act.
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Celebrity Style Web
Full of attenuate detail and back-number heart, Billy Breathes changes moods like a blurred bounce day. It contains one too abounding ballads: "Waste," with its address to "Come decay your time with me," is just too precious.
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Hartford Courant
The lyrics for the 13 new songs on this album remain in the classic Phish mode -- that is, weird and cryptic. But for the most part, Phish's music is the message. So you can either break your brain trying to decipher this stuff, or just roll with the beat.
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Review Corner
You could classify Billy Breathes as the most rocky of the three, but given Phish’s embracing of different genres, that would be a rough approximation. Lyrically, you get the impression that most lyrics are either an afterthought or written while stoned.
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