![]() "Two Thousand Places", the aforementioned Des'ree quoter, also aligns the band's swollen instrumental inventory into a joyous noise, despite being slightly marred by a lapse into the repetitiousness of the debut's songwriting (see: "Soldier Girl"). ![]() "Hold Me Now", however, has been announced as the first single, which makes sense: Its pounded piano and brassy peaks are the best candidates to sell Dell laptops or Sobe juice, which (Pitchformula take note) never even remotely detracts from its sunshiny summer party utility. With tracks serving more as chapter-like divisions of an album-long piece than actual song markers, it's hard to spot which standout track will be alchemized into money for new robes by the band's formidable licensing squad. Following their debut album's usage of section numbers (song titles are in parentheses), and stitching eight-minute epics and one-minute fragments together into a cohesive symphony, the band's sound benefits greatly from DeLaughter's realization that not every instrument always needs to be playing at once. It also helps that Together We're Heavy finds the group growing musically from the let's-start-quiet-then-GET-REAL-LOUD arrangement rut of their debut, The Beginning Stages Of, with Tim DeLaughter conducting his followers through a near-continuous hour of complex musical ebbs and flows. Which is all a long-winded way of explaining why I sorta like The Spree, despite lyrics like, "You gotta be good, you gotta be strong" (not a Des'ree cover), or, "It's the coolest waterslide" you might feel suffocated by the band's optimist syrup, but it's clear that, if nothing else, they're not being calculated about it. ![]() Though their uniform dress and Jehovah's Witness exuberance often gets them smirkily labeled as a cult, anyone who's found themselves amidst the band's live audience can tell you how difficult it is to keep your indie cynic shield intact and not get drunk on whatever jolly substance the band's audio Kool-Aid is heavily laced with. Whereas the film shows a schoolbus full of lax-groomed hippies driving to Israel to perform their songs amidst desert ruins, The Polyphonic Spree pack their bohemian mass into tour buses and bring their robe-clad Godspeed You Prozac Emperor sound to the dingy, beer-reeking venues of America. ![]() The Polyphonic Spree never directly lift up their myriad voices for God (except in an ancient Egyptian Sun/Ra worship sense), yet I can't help but think of their 20+ members as the direct offspring of the Jesus Christ Superstar movie cast. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |