The whole choir is on drugs.
I bought this album after I saw them play "Light & Day / Reach for The Sun" on NBC’s Scrubs. I was drawn to the summery vibe and the sort of pedestrian weirdness the band seems to embrace what with the white robes and all. My wife said she thought they seemed nice. She’s an impeccable judge of character so when I saw it at Target for a ridiculously low (and telling) $6.99 I took the leap. Plus it came with a bonus ep so who am I to resist. This is what I have learned:
There are about a hundred people in The Polyphonic Spree, or at least enough to not bother counting actual members instead of just estimating, like with ants, or sheep in a field. It’s easy to imagine the band traveling from town to town picking up new members as it goes like a cult. They begin by plucking the most earnest noodlers from the crowd and allow them some space on stage to kinesthetically interpret a song or two. Occasionally someone, someone special, shows real promise and is offered a tambourine while the rest are hugged warmly and handed down to the security guards waiting off stage. After the last of the bootleggers and dose dealers have safely packed off, this someone special remains and is presented with a white robe smelling faintly of veggie burritos. The band’s leader explains that the robe’s previous occupant, “Sandy,” had to rejoin his parents in Denver, leaving them one member shy of this many. Imagine it, forcing the gossamer folds over your own white-kid afro, wide eyed and sweaty. You’re in the band!
Then they give you drugs.
But not the kind of drugs that make you see pretty colors or flying things that shouldn’t be flying. Not visionary far-flung awesome drugs. Just drugs. Nice drugs. Forgettable-after-the-weekend drugs. And that’s the thing. It’s kinda fun for a bit and then it’s gone.
Sure, some moments linger. There is a hanging resonance of jubilation at the end of "Light & Day / Reach for The Sun" that might just turn the funeral dirge you call Wednesday right around. But the song comes late in the album by which point you’ve already tuned out because you can’t make sense of the ebb and flow of one semi-formed song into another, plus you’re pretty sure you’ve heard this sort of stuff before, only way better. Maybe on Sgt. Pepper.
There is an inclusive grab-an-instrument-and-play-along spirit as evidenced both by the aforementioned quantity of band members and the occasionally chanty chorus, no verse, chorus song writing which easily invites outside participation without the strain of remembering too many words. It is my sense that The Spree, through its unison playing, swaying sing-alongs and upbeat material, would have listeners believe that they are inspired to a near transcendental degree by some politically correct higher power. What is so inspirational, you might ask? Apparently it’s the sun. And reaching for things… and being happy… and having a nice day. Seriously.
While they do sound happy to be together and genuinely if not exuberantly stirred by the whatever, I don’t quite buy it. For all the happy-happy love-love in these songs, both lyrically and texturally, there is an underlying sense of worldly acceptance. If you’re a glass-is-half-full kind of person, which the band surely hopes you are, the tone created is casually sunny but not too pushy - inviting and celebratory. For someone who hasn’t just swallowed a vicodin there might also exist a sort of resigned pragmatism or, worse, languor that weighs things down like muddy boots, keeping the whole thing from dirvishing off into a utopian glee so pink and heady there’s no point even trying to describe it beyond its being pink and heady. And that’s exactly what disappoints me about this album.
Where is the super freakout? Where’s the wheels-coming-off-the-bus-but-we’re-too-high-to-care? The frenetic crescendo and the smile inducing I-thought-it-would-never-come-but-isn’t-it-awesome-now-that-it’s-here payoff? If Wayne Coyne has taught us anything that doesn’t have to do with giant bunny suits it’s this: if you’re going to be weird you have to be very weird and very very good. It’s what separates The Wall from Mr. Roboto. You have to commit.
I guess that’s what the white robes are supposed to do, make them weird. According to legend the matching outfits are a second attempt at removing marketable visual distractions like cool retro t-shirts from the purity of the music. The first idea was to cover the entire ensemble in a single enormous white sheet perforated with enough holes for the musicians’ heads to poke out; an uber-poncho of sorts. I would like to have seen that. However someone, probably the guy playing the flugelhorn, would have become hopelessly snared in the thing and suffocated to death on stage so it’s just as well.
In more ambitious hands this album could have been a wall of hysterical pop-edelic bliss with epic choral swells, a riot of brass and carnivals of percussion framing tender lulls in which the lead singer might provide the kind of sweet affirmations for which his voice is so clearly made. After the first listen I was shocked, shocked to find that most of the songs clock in between just 2 and 4 minutes. Modest little pop song playing times without the hook to get you in or the bombast to get you off. There is never enough time for one track to distinguish itself from the last or enough structure to plug in and say “Ohhhhh, the SUN!” I perked up when I saw the last cut, "A Long Day," chiming in at a marathon 36 1/2 minutes until I realized it was an empty, droning atmospheric toss-off about as out of place on this album as forks in soup.
Ultimately there is enough good intent and musicianship on the album to generate a tidal pleasure, and you are welcome to ride, but don’t expect big, ecstatic waves here. I think you’ll find your time better spent with The Flaming Lips, The Beta Band, Of Montreal or maybe even going out and reaching for things and being happy and having a nice day of your very own. Seriously.
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