If you've never witnessed the spectacle of Norman Jewison's film adaptation of Jesus Christ Superstar, by all means pop some kettle corn and make tonight an Andrew Lloyd Weber night. Proving that all The Passion needed to unite audiences was some wicked psychedelic jams, JCS told the story of Christ's last couple days in quintessential 1973 fashion: extravagant jumpsuits, limb-flailing choreography and racially encompassing cast decisions. Along with Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky", the film is the best time capsule of that weird post-60s fallout period where the hippies that didn't turn militant turned to a bell-bottomed form of Christianity. To modern Jesuphobes, the results are both stomach-ache hilarious and strangely, sneakily moving.
The Polyphonic Spree never directly lift up their myriad voices for God (except in an ancient Egyptian Sun/Ra worship sense), yet I can't help but think of their 20+ members as the direct offspring of the Jesus Christ Superstar movie cast. Whereas the film shows a schoolbus full of lax-groomed hippies driving to Israel to perform their songs amidst desert ruins, The Polyphonic Spree pack their bohemian mass into tour buses and bring their robe-clad Godspeed You Prozac Emperor sound to the dingy, beer-reeking venues of America. Though their uniform dress and Jehovah's Witness exuberance often gets them smirkily labeled as a cult, anyone who's found themselves amidst the band's live audience can tell you how difficult it is to keep your indie cynic shield intact and not get drunk on whatever jolly substance the band's audio Kool-Aid is heavily laced with.
Which is all a long-winded way of explaining why I sorta like The Spree, despite lyrics like, "You gotta be good, you gotta be strong" (not a Des'ree cover), or, "It's the coolest waterslide"; you might feel suffocated by the band's optimist syrup, but it's clear that, if nothing else, they're not being calculated about it. It also helps that Together We're Heavy finds the group growing musically from the let's-start-quiet-then-GET-REAL-LOUD arrangement rut of their debut, The Beginning Stages Of, with Tim DeLaughter conducting his followers through a near-continuous hour of complex musical ebbs and flows. Following their debut album's usage of section numbers (song titles are in parentheses), and stitching eight-minute epics and one-minute fragments together into a cohesive symphony, the band's sound benefits greatly from DeLaughter's realization that not every instrument always needs to be playing at once.
With tracks serving more as chapter-like divisions of an album-long piece than actual song markers, it's hard to spot which standout track will be alchemized into money for new robes by the band's formidable licensing squad. "Hold Me Now", however, has been announced as the first single, which makes sense: Its pounded piano and brassy peaks are the best candidates to sell Dell laptops or Sobe juice, which (Pitchformula take note) never even remotely detracts from its sunshiny summer party utility. "Two Thousand Places", the aforementioned Des'ree quoter, also aligns the band's swollen instrumental inventory into a joyous noise, despite being slightly marred by a lapse into the repetitiousness of the debut's songwriting (see: "Soldier Girl").
More impressively layered, if less instantaneously memorable, are the album's lengthier tracks, most bearing multiple segments and melodies and placing The Spree's sound (along with their awesome new curlicue logo) in direct lineage from Chicago Transit Authority. Opening track "A Long Day Continues/We Sound Amazed" spends its middle section enmeshed in a mellow trippy vamp that shows off the group's more restrained use of their palette, while "Suitcase Calling" works through at least five different ways to express bouncy glee. The climactic "When the Fool Becomes the King" shows the downside of this approach, with too many ambitious sections glommed together in seemingly arbitrary fashion, but even this 10-minute journey ends up with a clever reprise of the first album's "It's the Sun", locking Together We're Heavy's overarching structure into continuity with the band's previous work.
Still, am I the only one slightly bothered by Tim DeLaughter's continued Single White Female-esque desire to become Wayne Coyne? The Polyphonic Spree have begun to carve out their own niche here, so it's troublesome to see their leader shaping his creative energies in transparent idol emulation; if The Flaming Lips' next album took a turn towards hip-hop, even money says DeLaughter would be interviewing MCs within hours. Fortunately, the ensemble makes up for much of this, getting by on taking their primary influence's orchestral good mood to the logical extreme. The Polyphonic Spree's gospel may not be the most original of scriptures, but their non-denominational Indiespell is good enough to flail your arms to while worshipping the planetary body of your choice.
