Music world gets a sonic baptism
By Simon Umlauf
CNN Headline News
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The Polyphonic Spree's East coast tour starts June 2, followed by a proper release of their last album "The Beginning of ... The Polyphonic Spree."
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(CNN) -- At your first Polyphonic Spree show you might ask yourself, "Is this a UFO cult on its way to Roswell, New Mexico, or the lost choir of the Grateful Dead?"
More than 20 musicians take the stage adorned in bright, white robes. Young women with rain-washed hair and smiling men with full-thick beards line up on the choir pews. Then a piccolo sprouts up, a French horn gleams, the percussion section begins to rumble and guitar amps crackle.
You can't miss the classical harp set off to the side and some funny antenna-type thing toward the front -- a theremin. Then the bandleader, Tim DeLaughter, bounces out and electrifies the symphony, charging the crowd with a revival-like energy.
The music is a sonic baptism -- happy, loving and positively charged. For that moment say goodbye to angst-ridden rap and some of today's flimsy heavy metal.
If you mix the disarming charm of Kermit the Frog and the psychedelic enthusiasm of The Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album, you begin to have an idea of what The Polyphonic Spree sounds like. Some compare a Polyphonic performance to The Who's film "Tommy;" others might label it a rock musical.
"As a kid, I was inspired by the Walt Disney storybook records that would use orchestration to help illustrate their stories on a sonic level," recalls DeLaughter, who began dreaming up the concept three years ago.
Polyphonic member Ricky Rasura from El Paso, Texas, on the classical harp at a recent concert.
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"It's definitely an unorthodox version of a musical, it's unfolding, I can't get my head exactly around what it is because I'm in the middle of it," he says from his home in Dallas, Texas, "It definitely has that feel of becoming a musical."
When DeLaughter decided to put The Polyphonic Spree together two years ago, his friends and family thought he had lost it. He hadn't played a note since his band Tripping Daisy crashed in 1999 after losing its guitarist to a drug overdose. He also had a family to feed and was financially strapped.
The Polyphonic Spree was DeLaughter's sonic vision -- a fusion of a choir, an orchestra and a pop band, all with their own distinct sounds married into one choral-symphonic pop group. It was DeLaughter's dream, but to those close to him thought it was a possible nightmare.
Then, one of DeLaughter's co-partners at his Dallas record store Good Records put Tim's dream where his mouth was. DeLaughter's friend booked him a gig opening for California-based Grandaddy, which allowed Tim only two weeks to put the band together.
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Toby Holbrooks on the Theremin. (The Theremin made the eerie whistle sound on the 1966 Beach Boy’s hit "Good Vibrations.")
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DeLaughter gathered 13 musicians and found the "overwhelming" sound he was searching for. It didn't take long for DeLaughter to add a dozen more musicians and develop a cult-like following. David Bowie caught wind of their performance at the 2002 South by Southwest music festival and booked them for his Meltdown Festival.
The Meltdown Festival performance ignited a U.K. tour that lasted nearly a year, and spawned the group's first album, "The Beginning Stages of ... The Polyphonic Spree."
In the past year, The Polyphonic Spree has bounced back over to Britain and just begun to spread the exultant gospel throughout the United States.
The band is signing a deal with Walt Disney Records that will allow Tim to expand The Polyphonic Spree. "Within a year from now we'll be touring [constantly]; we're being asked to play all over the world right now," DeLaughter says in his slight Texas drawl.
