Anastasio Goes Exploring, and Fans Eagerly Follow

Few performers can play three hours of all-new, unreleased music with a new band and have 5,000 people dancing and cheering from first note to last. Trey Anastasio--who built just such an indulgent audience as the frontman of neo-hippie-rock favorites Phish--didn’t abuse that privileged position on Thursday at the Greek Theatre.

With Phish on indefinite hiatus, the singer-guitarist is exploring Afro-beat and jazz-funk sounds, assembling a band featuring a four-piece horn section that’s as much the focus as he is. Thursday it seemed a work in progress--it was only the band’s second show--but quite promising.

The first set, with churning rhythms drawn from the late Nigerian icon Fela Kuti, seemed at first a bit dilettantish, lacking the personalized fusions of Talking Heads or Paul Simon, not to mention Miles Davis. But steadily the grooves grew dynamic, and deft dissonance in the horns added vibrant color.

The second set, though, revealed a broader and richer approach, moving from what could pass for a forgotten ‘60s psychedelic-pop gem to a flute-accented ballad reminiscent of the Band to an intense, swelling instrumental recalling Santana’s “Soul Sacrifice” to a stately, honeysuckle-tinged acoustic piece.

It still suffered some from Phish’s tendency to hit the head (with cleverness and chops) more than the heart (with depth of emotion). But it never failed to hit the feet, which meant that perhaps the only people who didn’t have fun were the ushers given the Sisyphean job of trying to keep dancing fans out of the aisles.