The Polyphonic Spree - PopMatters Concert Review

You know how I'm completely insane sometimes? And go on and on (on and on!) about the reason, that keeps me hanging on and on and on? Well, one of the reasons is The Polyphonic Spree.

And they're *coming* to Portland. (if I were my mom, i'd exclam that 14 times.)

Next Monday. And then on to Seattle the next night.

You. Must. Go.

I'm offering a 1/2 back money back guarantee on your ticket if you go and don't enjoy yourself. But if you do love the show (and yes, you will, you will, you will, you will), you have to buy me a beer.

The Mormon asked me once, "Miguel, so when you take ecstasy, what does that feel like?"

It feels a lot like a Polyphonic Spree show.

I dragged a whole bunch of folks last time, and I'm going to solicit their opinions and spam everyone on my email list. And then I'm going to do the same thing to all of my Seattle friends.

I'm really not kidding about this. Email me, and I'll send you a track.

Let me put it this way: I rearranged my flight plans to NYC, and now I'll be missing the Burning Man Decompression party in order to see them, and I don't regret it for even half an instance.

Go here for some music, and read a review below.

The Polyphonic Spree - PopMatters Concert Review: "Simultaneously original and wholly derivative, spooky and super-positive, clean (as in sober) and wasted in 1960s style bacchanalia, the Polyphonic Spree kick around in peak pop moments for five, six minutes at a time. Imagine your favorite Beatles moment, maybe a certain bass line, or a coda. Now imagine letting it ride 10 times as long. Deliriously dizzying, right? DeLaughter reaches for the heavens as he sings. He's like a cross between Joe Cocker and Wayne Coyme of the Flaming Lips. He's surrounded by a stage packed tight with stringed instruments and horns, a theremin, you know, the usual rock band trappings. There's a French horn player, a trombonist, two keyboardists, a flautist, a violinist, a trumpeter. There's 20 (give or take a few) human voices singing at the tops of their lungs and it sounds like hundreds and they're jumping around the stage like spastic flying fish. This is sonic and visual saturation. This is monkey mind overload.
Check your skepticism at the door. Most of the audience is shaking their ass, standing when they could be sitting, smiling when they could be frowning. It's hard, you have to really try, to keep a straight face, to resist the impulse to get up and dance. This is one of those live concerts where, if you breathe deeply, relax even the slightest bit, you just might feel a shiver pass through your body. It's irony-free symphonic mayhem.
The sound of hundreds of people singing, ecstatically, reminds us of every church service, every National Anthem, every sporting event, every Bic lighter encore we've ever witnessed. Think of a production of Jesus Christ Superstar, and Pet Sounds, and the ending coda of George Harrison's 'Isn't it a Pity [Version One]' from 1970's All Things Must Pass. Th"