Those not familiar with The Polyphonic Spree will most likely see them as a triumph of style over substance: a band made up of 20-plus members, complete with a 9-piece choir and numerous percussionists, draped in flowing, colourful robes and singing about the sun. Those in the know, however, have revelled for years in the gigantic sounds and hippie-ish levity of this bunch.
As Bacharach and the like will tell you, writing a pop song that seems simple is hard work, and probably never more so than when there are so many elements to consider. From the strings to the wind section and the miscellaneous instruments in between, it would be easy for the music of the Polyphonic Spree to descend into absurdity, but band leader Tim DeLaughter shows a delicate touch.
Between the robes, the choir and the hands-in-the-air joyousness of the Spree’s music, many people look for a religious undertone: if it looks like a revivalist church meeting, and sounds like one, it must be one, right? Not at all: the Polyphonic Spree demonstrates that while religion is dependent upon music in many ways, music is not dependent on religion, regardless of its aesthetic.
For their third album, The Fragile Army, there have been some changes to the Spree. Not only have they been whittled down by a handful of members (though they still number upwards of twenty), the trademark robes that seemed like cult-issue dress have been dispatched in favour of solid black clothes, with a red cross on the hip and a white heart on the breast pocket.
The new uniforms, with their militaristic edge that befits the album title, are thankfully just window dressing. Apart from a brief interjection of marching footsteps in Section 25 [Younger Yesterday], the music retains its glorious sense of childish glee mingled with stadium-sized grandiosity. In fact, even the marching sounds have a vaguely childish sense to them, as though a small brigade of kindergarteners were stomping with mock severity.
The album opens with a sub-30-second instrumental piece, all tinkling chimes and swelling synths heavy with reverb, that gradually swell into the album’s first and greatest singalong track, Section 22 [Running Away]. Aside from the way the electric guitar standing out further from the mix than in previous songs, this is archetypal Polyphonic Spree: joyous mass harmonies and fluttering instrumentation, all presented with such obvious enthusiasm that it never comes close to cheesy. Instead, it is a magnificent contradiction of a song, sky-high in sound and thick with music and vocal harmonies, but simultaneously retaining a gorgeous simplicity.
The lyrics recall the uncomplicated bliss of infatuation without ever relying on clichés, as DeLaughter and choir sing “it’s like running away/with the wind in your face/it’s like flying/and you and I are open wide”. In black and white, the lyrics seems simple to the point of redundancy, but the Spree invest them with such ecstasy that it becomes undeniably romantic.
Lyrics range from the simple to the more cryptic, something of a departure for the usually candid DeLaughter. The song DeLaughter calls an “ode to Bush” (“hold the line/call off the strike”; “we all wanna know/if we buried he ones we loved the most”), Section 24 [The Fragile Army] revels in the oblique and contradictory, as DeLaughter (with choir backing, of course) sings “you might like to think you’re in denial”. Similarly curious on a Spree album is the presence of a menacing chorus line like “it’s time to lose your excitement”, delivered with flourishes and grand harmonies certain to create the opposite effect.
Like Icelandic post-rockers Sigur Ros, the Polyphonic Spree seem to constantly repeat themselves from a stylistic perspective, but somehow retain that unique spark in each and every song that makes them so endlessly fascinating. The Fragile Army is an album for those who love the Spree, or those who could: it won’t convert the non-believers, because it is quite deliberately preaching to (and with) the choir.
tom_slater1
said ages ago