One final encore of the fan favorite "You Enjoy Myself" on Oct. 7, 2000, and the musical entity known as Phish disappeared from the face of the planet as we knew it.

As each member of the band moved on to work on his own side project in the meantime, millions of jam band devotees were abandoned as their musical idols split up. The group was on an indefinite hiatus. That was all we knew.

But two years after leaving the stage for its longest intermission yet, Phish somehow committed 78 minutes worth of previously unheard material to tape in four days.

Should we have anticipated the spacey hard-rock funk of Oysterhead, guitarist Trey Anastasio's side project? The bar room blast of drummer Jon Fishman's Pork Tornado? The mellow but cheerful synth-jazz of keyboardist Page McConnell's Vida Blue?

As it turns out, none of the above. Round Room sounds so unlike any of those projects that it makes me wonder if each member of Phish has a separate brain that he keeps in a cryogenically frozen chamber while not performing as part of the group.

What most of Round Room does sound like is a demo album that was somewhat hastily thrown together as part of a practice session following a large break. Oh wait, that's what it is.

It's hard to imagine where most of this new material came from, because many of the melodies and chord progressions are uncharacteristically forgettable at first. "Anything But Me," "All of These Dreams" and "Thunderhead" are all slow, country/gospel-esque songs that either need to be developed or should have been scrapped. It is disappointing to think what the album could have been if the band had toured before recording it and had let the songs expand in front of an audience to see what would sink or swim.

But somehow, it's hard to deny that the music grows on the listener quicker than expected. "Mock Song," for example, might have senseless, random lyrics, but after several listens, it sticks. Some songs that seem to overlap melodically eventually start to hold themselves on their own.

The disc does not feel like the uninhibited, creativity-conducive environment that bassist Mike Gordon sings about in the bubbly title track, but it has its moments of musical mastery.

The extended, meandering jam sections of "Pebbles and Marbles" and "Waves" are actually quite reassuring that the group still has its magic where it has always excelled the most. The lack of production effort doesn't matter here because Phish has become so impeccably good at creating its own thick instrumental groove that it doesn't even need to put much conscious thought into it anymore.

Other outstanding tunes include "Seven Below" and the multifaceted "Walls of the Cave," which boast some of the group's finest production since 1998's The Story of the Ghost. It might have taken a pretty dull four days to record this disc, but when they took an extra step to kick up the song quality, it worked out pretty well. So why didn't the guys just take their time with the rest of it?

This album isn't horrible, but let's face it; we waited two years and only got four days. Phish might be out of hibernation, but most of this album feels like it's still in the process of pulling itself out of bed. Listening to Round Room is like wandering around a real round room: it takes us some time to get our bearings. Grade: B