Here to promote latest album Yes It’s True for Melbourne Festival, The Polyphonic Spree have always been a curious live experience. Whether it’s the robes, the overly motivational banter or the sheer number of band members, your focus is meant to be grabbed and shaken, your emotions stirred.
As they began a white sheet obscured the view, on which prophet leader Tim DeLaughter spray painted “Yo Booty Is Mine” before cutting it with scissors, revealing a stage overflowing with robe-cladded members drunk on their own positivity. The girl-choir has reduced to four members, and interestingly they seem to have gotten younger, slimmer and more scantily clad. Hold Me Now and Light & Day/Reach For The Sun are dispensed with early though in no way prove to be sole highlights. We Sound Amazed was epic, and INXS’ Don’t Change and Rocky Horror’s Time Warp proved more vital than you might think given their place on pub-rock cover bands set lists. Announcing ‘heres a song off our latest album’ usually falls flat but I responded most to the newer material. It feels like the trademark choir hollers have been fitted into the song after the fact, rather than them being the sole purpose of the song. The band still struggles with dynamics, opting for uber-bombasticity over letting sparseness ebb and build towards the eventual screaming brass.
Mercifully a lot of the ‘are-we-gonna-have-a-great-time’ banter is said off-mic, leaving only the keen fans of the first few rows hearing it. DeLaughter may be charmingly full of shit and his stories usually go nowhere, but it’s hard not to get swept up and smile at the silliness of it all.
BY NICK HILTON
Loved: Free endorphins.
Hated: I don’t hate, I congratulate.
Drank: Hefeweizen, red wine.
