The Polyphonic Spree

The Sun Machine is coming down and we're going to have a party!

The Polyphonic Spree at Plymouth Academy. Blimey! The place has hardly changed in the twenty years I've been going to it and holds a lot of memories for me. The atrocious weather means we get there late. Catching only two tracks of support band Hope, whose music seems a world away from what we are here for, big slabs of aural reverb and fast rock. The Canadians are competent but Tim DeLaughter really needs to find a more suitable support act, though my judgement on just two songs may be a little unfair.

Anyway at 10pm the lights dim, the crowd start cheering and the Polyphonic Spree walk reverently out dressed in their robes of many colours. All 22 of them! They start reverently a single white spotlight on the bearded harpist and the plucking notes are quietly joined by the drums and guitar. Rapidly the sound evolves into "A Long Day Continues/We Sound Amazed" with the celestial sounding brightly coloured choir adding in the mixed up and it's a Dervish mix of huge rock riffs (very Zeppelin) and off kilter horn section.

The band are Evangelists of all that's good in music, crunching basslines, power riffs, Beach Boy sounding theremin and slide guitar. Animal style drumming, floaty keyboards and the nine piece choir with lashings of soul and frenetic synchronized swaying, hair flying everywhere and sometimes leaping into crazy dancing. With Tim DeLaughter fronting the whole thing, conducting, whirling, singing, yelling, leaping, crooning and we're still on the first track!



Not pausing for the adulation of a crowd who are clearly lapping it up the Polyphonic Spree launch into "It's the Sun" and the small crowd pressed up so close to the band, it's a very intimate venue, really do themselves proud. The band look surprised at how loudly we sing it back to them and applaud us at the end.

Tim says they've never been to Plymouth before but with fans like these they promise to be back before telling us about Oliver Hardy dying onstage here and he was trying to get juice backstage when a ghost approached him leaving us a bit bewildered by telling us he's a big Charlie Chaplin fan!

"Hold Me Now" is well greeted and the frantic stage act has transmutted to the crowd, even those in the dress circle are going wild, it looks like the Evangelical church scene from the Blues Brothers with old and young leaping about, not many bands I've been to have achieved this! Even their drummer has clambered onto the PA stack!

The Polyphonic Spree have grown from their "Beginnig Stages.." of Jesus Christ Superstar style stage tag, to something immense, a tidal wave of sound with all the flotsam and jetsam of the last 40 years of music in its wake.



"2000 Places" is a huge anthem, and spreads the love through out the audience, everyone joins in, everyone is lifted by the Angelic chorus and it's an unforgettable moment. Again the band are elated by just how well the tune has worked.

It is quite an incredible thing to witness, it is bizarrely spiritual and does lift you, it is like a rock opera with immense inner power. But then I know the words and it is much like a church in that if you don't know the hymns you don't get as much out of it.

I know this because I've not heard the first album in a while and when they burst into "Suitcase Calling" I'm left flat, I can't join in and it's like being left at the platform as the train continues it's psychedelic tour of the heavens! It's still fantastic to watch the band in the throws of rapture, whirling, huge smiles, thrusting to the music!

But me I feel like I've fallen from ecstasy and I wonder while getting a beer and a smoke together how well they are received by those who aren't part of the cult of the Spree. I look around for casual observers to see their reaction but there doesn't appear to be any. I guess the bad storm raging outside has kept them at home.

"One Man Show" catapults me back into the feelings of the exalted throng and with "When The Fool Becomes The King" I dance delirious to the epic conclusion of this colourful crescendo of music.

The band leave and we are all wiping sweat from our faces and grinning and the white haired bearded guy next to me is telling me he hasn't had this much fun since The Who!



Hand in hand, the band return for an encore by making their way to the stage from the back of Academy, parting a rapturously applauding audience as they go by. Once on stage, DeLaughter and his choir begin a chant of "Love" as the rest of the band groove and the whole Academy shakes before breaking into another anthem with "Together We're Heavy."

Then the diminutive flute player starts a military tune, Tim says do you know what's coming we all yell "Yeah!" and are blown to bits with the hard hitting anthem "Solider Girl," we sing our hearts out and then jump-for-joy with the cheeriness of "Light And Day."

Then the band lift us all off into a whole other stratosphere with a back-and-call, "The sun machine is coming down/And we're going to have a party!" And we do! Then they walk off stage through the crowd, we applaud, we shake hands, we kiss them!



Their records translate a little of what they are about but live they are truly awesome. Buy the records, learn the words, see them live and join the rapture! I defy you to find a band which achieves the same exaltation. They are no longer a novelty act, they've thrown off the Beginning Stages and will now continue to win hearts for as long as they continue to carve out their own niche.

As we walk away blissfully happy, at having spent the night sun worshipping, the weather no longer seems so violent, our only regret is that they didn't do "Diamonds/Mild Devotion To Majesty."

harp/amazed
sun
hold
2000
Hanging
Suitcase
One Man
Drum Off-King
++++++++
Heavy
Flute/Soldier
Light
Sun Machine

FUTURE GIGS

sorry, we currently have no gigs listed for this act.