The Polyphonic Spree

With The Polyphonic Spree, simple things have a way of turning grand. Take the happenstance that was the piano on which frontman Tim DeLaughter composed the backbone of the group’s new disc, Together We’re Heavy. “A friend of ours was living in New York, and didn’t have a place for a piano she left back in Dallas,” says Julie Doyle, DeLaughter’s partner in the Spree and in life, “so she asked ‘do you guys want it?’

“So the movers brought it over, and all of a sudden it was sitting in our bedroom and Tim just kind of went to the piano and left the guitar for a while and got really inspired.”

Never mind that Tim hadn’t really played piano before (“I was kind of teaching myself and at the same time writing songs,” he says), or that the band wasn’t even thinking of a second record to follow up The Beginning Stages of The Polyphonic Spree. Tim was “just writing, honestly, for our live shows,” Julie says, “because we were already being asked to headline, and we only had 30 minutes of material because we hadn’t been a band that long. It’s weird, but here we are – that totally ended up being the driving force behind the songwriting of the entire album.”

That’s the way things work with this band. And it’s in this way that it’s useless to try to pin a definition on The Polyphonic Spree – they gave up trying themselves a long time ago. The original idea – a symphonic pop band, large in number, wearing robes so that all the members’ different clothing styles wouldn’t be a distraction – metamorphosed from the very minute it was put into practice.

“From the very beginning, my idea of this band was a vision of a sound,” Tim says, “and what’s come out of it is so much more spectacular and dramatic. That it’s happened simply out of just evolving, out of being a group for three and a half years, with the pleasant surprises that come along the way. Thus, the second record, it’s another surprise: You think that you have a grasp on a sound, so to speak, and it’s taken on another shape and becomes something new.”

Together We’re Heavy is a big record. Where the aptly titled The Beginning Stages of… was initially a demo cut over a couple of days just to get the band gigs, Together is the product of a year’s work. Naturally, there’s a lot of work to be done when a band features trumpet, trombone, harp, French horn, theremin, flute, pedal steel guitar, keyboards, piano and a ten-piece choir, along with Tim’s voice and the usual guitar, bass and drums. But a sound that big, more often than not, gets diminished on record, so great pains were taken with the mix in an effort to make the sound as dynamic and expansive as it had become on stage.

“Tim and Julie put some blood, sweat and tears into it,” bassist Mark Pirro says.

More important than the size of the sound is its nuances: We hear the gentle fluttering of a flute when the song calls for it, or the harsh pounding of piano keys moments later, or the full force of the band as it sweeps over Tim’s delightful quaver. “I think we’ve come up with something that truly represents The Polyphonic Spree where we are right now,” he says, “and that’s what a record is supposed to do, be a kind of a snapshot of where that band is at that particular time.”

All the quiet, loud and carefully constructed in-between is necessary to express the emotional majesty of Together We’re Heavy. “Section 12 (Hold Me Now)” is like a condensed “A Day In the Life,” had the Beatles managed to fit in a profound romantic declaration for a jittery age: “Hold me now / Don’t start shakin’ / You keep me safe / Don’t ever think / You’re the only one / When times are tough.” Then there’s “Section 13 (Diamonds/Mild Devotion To Majesty),” which repeats its challenge of “What would you do / If it all came up to you / And love had a new place to play? / today?”- it’s at turns trembling and introspective when sung over quiet, piano-driven sections and glorious and affirming when buoyed by the swelling power of the Spree. These songs, while ultimately hopeful, are deeper and darker than many would assume The Polyphonic Spree capable of creating. Sure, when 20 or so people get on stage, wearing choir robes and smiling, really smiling, it’s a shock to the rock senses. It’s hard not to get caught up in the positive energy, which led to some among the professionally jaded to deride the band as gimmicky or simply dismissing them, as Julie puts it, as “a happy-clappy band.” It was almost like a defense mechanism. What those folks are missing, though, is that smiles are a triumph over pain, not an ignorance of it.

“This band is capable of every kind of emotion,” Tim says. “This is a lot darker of a record. I always thought Beginning Stages was melancholy, but a lot of people would disagree with me on that. But with this record, there’s some definitely darker undertones, a darker journey. There’s some melancholy mixed in, and then there’s some over-the-top zeal. I think this band is capable of basically anything. I’ve experienced every emotion with this group, and the fact that we’re able to communicate that musically pretty much makes what we’re capable of limitless.”

Take a song like “Section 19 (When The Fool Becomes A King),” which finds the band chanting the words most associated with its message – “love, love, love.” But the track makes a drama of its 10 minutes, beginning with a martial snare and continuing through pastoral moments, an insistent rock groove and an eventual storm surge of sound crashing over the closing lyric that makes plain the journey on which it’s just taken you, “and it makes me smileŠ on my way.” Then there’s “Section 14 (Two Thousand Places),” with its chorus of “You gotta be good! / You gotta be strong! / You gotta be two thousand places at once!” Sung to you by a smiling choir, those words can feel like some sort of manic carpe diem exhortation, but there is anxiety in those words. Listen, as the music heaves from quiet to loud like waves crashing to shore, and then to the lyrics, first sung in soft, faltering strains, and then shouted, backed by the full weight of the band; those words voice the demands made by a sped-up society, the worries of those holding on like a kid at the end of the line in a game of crack-the-whip.

They didn’t have to search far for inspiration. “It feels like that in this band, let me tell you,” Mark says. “Two thousand places at once. I mean, I’m in awe of the things taking place in this band that we’re trying to be a part of. It’s overwhelming.” But within those confounding logistics – try getting the average guitar-bass-drums band someplace on time, then try moving a 20-plus-person group around the country – lies inspiration.

“For me, and this is probably the most exciting thing for me about being part of the band, is that it kind of says, ‘yeah, you can do it.’” Tim says. “We’ve come in contact with so many barriers, so many things we have to get around, and the band gets around them. It’s like we’re an example of ‘you can do anything.’ And I think that’s maybe what’s really hopeful and inspiring to a lot of people. Just behind the scenes on a business level or logistic level, just how we pull it off – I feel like we’re at the forefront, pioneering something, which is a huge responsibility and very exciting at the same time.”

“And I’m tired at the end of the day,” Tim adds, with a laugh, surprising himself with an alternate title for the record: Together We’re Weighed Upon. It’s a small thing, that joke, but salient in the way he doesn’t fail to take joy in that surprise. “Surprise” is one of Tim’s favorite words, whether describing Together We’re Heavy or the band in general, and the significance Tim gives those surprises give insight to how the small things – a joke, a discarded piano, a memory of when symphonic pop filled the airwaves – become something grand in The Polyphonic Spree. What you see when all those people take the stage in their white, or newly rainbow-hued, robes is a what it can look like when you overcome struggle in life by keeping yourself open to its possibilities.

Or as Julie puts it, “There’s a lot of truth up there.”