I think it’s pretty unlikely this album will be leaked; usually that kind of thing happens when someone at a record company messes up, but this is a project Phish is releasing themselves. I’d imagine the masters are being kept tight; and I actually doubt there will even be test pressings (for physical copies), as opposed to releasing it on the internet initially (like how David Byrne did his last album).
One thing I’m a bit concerned about is how the recent interview with Trey cites Lilywhite wanting to recreate Phish’s live sound on an album, instead of taking liberties like he did on Billy Breathes. This is all fine and good (although it might be a waste of Lilywhite’s abilities), but… isn’t the power of live Phish a result of songs developing on the road? I mean, let’s say Phish were to re-record Stash around 1995. Yeah, it’d probably be a whole lot better than the version recorded in 1991, but that doesn’t mean they could have pulled that off in 1991! You can’t have, say, a St. Louis-level “Ocelot” on the album, because at the time the album was recorded, it didn’t exist! I’ve never heard the “live sound” be a factor in a Phish studio album, usually because trying to replicate it would involve time travel. That’s why my favorite studio albums are the ones that take the most liberty and go in other directions, like Farmhouse, Undermind, Junta, and… Billy Breathes!
Thankfully, most of these songs are already beautiful without having iconic jams attached to them. Time Turns Elastic, Joy, Sugar Shack, and Twenty Years Later come to mind. I’m also uncertain if the two live “Jam > Light” versions we have accurately reflect the level of its’ evolution, since we know on the last TAB tour it was nothing short of epic.
