Dead & Company - TD Garden, Boston, MA 11-19-17 (Live) (2019) [Hi-Res]

After a night off that didn’t slow their momentum one little bit, Dead & Company wrapped up their Fall 2017 Boston visit with this jewel of a show, full of unpredictable moments and inventive playing. The Sunday evening gets off to a properly sanctified start with “Samson & Delilah,” then proceeds though a series of shifting styles and moods, reflected in such standbys as “Dire Wolf,” “Cold Rain and Snow,” and “Loser,” and then a relative rarity: Dead & Company’s debut performance (and one of only three to the present date) of “Corrina,” one of those Bob Weir songs that appeared in the Grateful Dead repertoire in the early 90s, but would flourish more fully in the hands of some of the post-GD ensembles. Up next is “Here Comes Sunshine,” a perfect platform for jamming that received one of its peak early performances by the Grateful Dead in its Boston premiere at the old Garden in April of 1973. “Greatest Story Ever Told” is an atypical but excellent choice of first set closer. The “China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider” duo is a virtual certainty to raise the roof to kick off a second set, as the version delivered here demonstrates. Oteil’s vocal on “Comes A Time” provides a beautiful prelude to an open-ended “Playing In The Band,” that quickly ascends into otherworldly regions of the sonic spectrum – that zone in which the Rhythm Devils, aka Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart, are right as home, as you’ll easily discern. The rest of the ensemble puts in its time exploring the cosmos as well, before returning us to earth with the stately chord that signals the opening of “Morning Dew.” The majestic rendition of Bonnie Dobson’s song would have sufficed as a show closer, but it turns Dead & Co. still had some rockin’ in their bones, and they deliver the goods with a one-two punch of “I Need A Miracle” and “Casey Jones” to close out the set. “Brokedown Palace” proves the much-beloved encore it has long been, but the band has one more gift to add: a reprise of that “Playing In The Band” they’d started more than an hour earlier.